^1 


1^  ■ 

'1)Tfl£0LCGIQLSE]iimAliY.| 

Ij     Princeton,  N.  J.  | 


BV  2070  .F7  1833  c.2 

Foster,  John. 

The  glory  of  the  age 


^i^  '. 


^Pl , . 


^f" 


TME 


GLORY  OF  THE  AGE: 

AN    ESSAY 

ON   THE 

SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS, 

BEING   THE 
SUBSTANCE  OF  A  DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED    BEFORE 

STlje  aSapttst  i^fssionars  ^ocictg,  aSrfstol,  ISng. 


By   JOHN   FOSTER. 


BOSTON : 

PUBLISHED    BY   JAMES    LORING, 
132  Washington  Street. 

1833. 


ADVERTISEMENT 


LONDON    EDITION. 


It  is  very  true,  as  several  friends  have  suggest- 
ed, that  the  following  Discourse  might,  on  some 
accounts,  have  been  more  properly  denominated 
an  Essay.  But,  as  the  series  of  thoughts  of  which 
it  consists  was  actually  addressed,  in  the  order 
in  which  they  here  occur,  though  with  much  less 
amplification,  to  a  public  assembly,  and  as  somewhat 
of  the  manner  of  expression  proper  to  such  an 
address  is  retained  in  the  composition,  the  author 
thinks  there  mi^ht  be  an  appearance  of  literary 
affectation  in  giving  it  any  other  title  than  one 
describinof  it  in  that  character. 


In  this  American  edition,  the  Publisher  has 
availed  himself  of  the  suggestion  of  the  author, 
and  has  altered  the  title  of  the  work,  which  "was 
called  a  Discourse,  and  given  a  name  more  appro- 
priate. There  is  a  singular  peculiarity  of  style 
and  a  rich  depth  of  thought  in  the  writings  of 
Mr.  Foster,  respecting  which,  Robert  Hall  made 
the  following  remark:  —  "They  are  like  a  great 
lumbering  waggon  loaded  with  gold !" 


^/  THE 

JUDGES  V.  23. 

THEY  CAME  NOT  TO  THE  HELP  OF  THE  LORD,  TO 
THE  HELP  OF  THE  LORD  AGAINST  THE  MIGHTY. 

The  practice  may  be  too  frequent,  of 
accommodating  objects  and  effects  in  the 
world  of  nature,  the  relations  and  transactions 
in  that  of  human  society,  and  the  merely  sec- 
ular facts  of  the  scripture  history,  to  the  pur- 
pose of  representing,  in  the  way  of  formal  and 
protracted  similitude,  the  truths  and  interests 
of  religion.  We  may  observe,  however,  that 
it  seems  to  the  honour  of  religion  that  so  many 
things  can  be  accommodated  to  its  illustration, 
without  any  recourse  to  that  perverted  ingenu- 
ity which  fancifully  descries  or  invents  resem- 
blances. It  is  an  evident  and  remarkable  fact, 
that  there  is  a  certain  principle  of  correspond- 
ence to  religion  throughout  the  economy  of  the 
world.     Things  bearing  an  apparent  analogy 


6  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

to  its  truths,  sometimes  more  prominently, 
sometimes  more  abstrusely,  present  themselves 
on  all  sides  to  a  thoughtful  mind.  He  that 
made  all  things  for  himself  appears  to  have 
willed  that  they  should  be  a  great  system  of 
emblems,  reflecting  or  shadowing  that  system  of 
principles,  which  is  the  true  theory  concerning 
Him,  and  our  relations  to  Him.  So  that  reli- 
gion, standing  up  in  grand  parallel  to  an  infinity 
of  things,  receives  their  testimony  and  homage, 
and  speaks  with  a  voice  which  is  echoed  by 
the  creation. 

It  may  therefore  be  permitted  us  to  fix  upon 
a  circumstance  in  the  political  conduct  of  an 
ancient  people,  as  adapted  to  suggest  more 
than  it  essentially  contains,  and  to  carry  our 
thoughts,  by  analogy,  to  a  kind  of  duty  and 
of  delinquency  more  directly  related  to  reli- 
gion. Under  this  license  our  subject  is  intro- 
duced by  a  sentence  pronounced,  we  may  pre- 
sume at  the  divine  dictation,  in  reproach  of  a 
refusal  to  co-operate  in  a  very  different  kind  of 
service  from  that  which  we  have,  on  the 
present  occasion,  to  recommend. 

The  negative  form  of  the  charge,  —  They 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  7 

came  not  to  the  help  of  the  Lord,  —  may  re- 
mind us  of  the  grievous  fact,  that  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  the  judicial  negativ^e  state- 
ments in  the  Bible,  respecting  the  conduct  of 
men,  are  accusations.  The  mention  that  they 
did  not  do  the  thing  in  question,  is  very  gener- 
ally the  implied  assertion  that  they  ought  to 
have  done  it.  And  the  consideration  becomes 
still  more  awful  upon  recollection  that  we  are 
told,  that  the  last  negative  statement  to  be 
uttered  on  earth,  and  uttered  by  the  greatest 
voice,  will  be  \vith  an  emphasis  of  condemna- 
tion ;  "  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  not — !" 

Observe  how  much  guilt  there  may  be  in 
mere  omission,  and  that,  even  though  we 
should  suppose  the  persons,  who  decline  the 
one  specific  duty,  to  be  occupied,  while  neg- 
lecting it,  in  employments  in  themselves  inno- 
cent and  laudable.  It  is  very  possible  that  the 
people  of  whose  absence  from  the  appointed 
scene  of  action  we  have  just  read  the  accusing 
record,  might  have  brought  a  plea  on  this 
ground,  against  the  justice  of  the  consequent 
malediction.  They  might  perhaps  have  had 
to  say,   that  they  were  diligently  prosecuting 


8  THE  GLORY  OF  THE   AGE, 

the  labours  of  their  rural  economy,  which  there 
might  be,  at  the  time,  particular  reasons  why 
they  should  not  suspend ;  or  that  they  were 
intent  on  certain  plans  for  rectifying  disorders 
in  their  society  ;  or  that  they  were  employing 
the  time  in  some  peculiarly  solemn  forms  of 
worship,  perhaps  imploring  the  intervention  of 
Heaven  in  the  alarming  crisis,  under  a  persua- 
sion of  the  perfect  sufficiency  of  the  Divine 
Power  independently  of  human  means.  But 
no  such  pleas  would  have  availed,  to  avert  the 
vindicative  sentence  which  the  prophetess  was 
instructed  to  pronounce  on  their  refusal  to  do 
that  one  thing,  which  the  summons  of  unques- 
tionable authority  had  signified  to  be,  in  that 
juncture,  their  precise  duty.  Such  allegations 
might  indeed  have  been  dishonestly  made,  as 
an  attempt  to  veil  selfishness  and  cowardice, 
the  real  causes  probably  for  withholding  the 
required  service ;  and  then  the  hypocrisy 
would  have  incurred  a  prompt  exposure  and 
a  severity  of  rebuke  ;  but  even  had  they  been 
made  sincerely,  and  proved  to  be  true,  they 
would  not  have  arrested  nor  revoked  the  con- 
demnation.     The   appeal  of  the   defaulters 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  9 

would  have  been  silenced  by  the  decision,  that 
it  is  of  the  essence  of  disobedience  and  rebellion 
to  assume  to  make  commutations  and  substitu- 
tions of  duty,  to  transfer  obligation  to  where  it 
would  be  less  inconvenient^  that  it  should  be 
enforced,  and  to  affect  to  render,  in  the  form 
of  preferred  and  easier  services,  an  equivalent 
for  the  obedience  which  the  righteous  and 
supreme  authority  has  distinctly  required  to 
be  rendered  in  that  harder  service  which  is 
evaded. 

Suppose  these  people  to  have  really  been 
of  a  quiet  and  harmless  disposition,  and  assidu-* 
ous  in  the  useful  vocations  of  ordinary  life, 
there  may  appear,  notwithstanding  the  urgency 
of  the  occasion,  something  hard  in  the  alter- 
native they  were  placed  in,  of  suddenly  aban- 
doning their  homes  to  rush  into  the  perils  of 
battle,  or  suffering  all  that  was  denounced  in 
so  heavy  an  execration.  And,  in  the  retro- 
spect of  the  many  forms  into  which  human 
duty  has  been  diversified  by  occasions,  as  dis- 
played in  the  Bible  and  other  records,  we  see 
many  situations  of  exceeding  hardship — not 
meaning,  by  such  a  term,  an  imputation  on 
2 


10  THE  GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

tliat  Authority  which  prescribed  their  arduous 
exercises.  The  great  contest  against  Evil, 
in  all  its  modes  of  invasion  of  this  world,  (but 
our  reference  is  chiefly  to  those  requiring  men's 
resistance  in  the  religious  capacity,)  has  been 
a  service  assigned  in  every  possible  difference 
of  circumstance  and  proportion  ;  and  some 
men's  shares  have  involved  a  violence  of  exer- 
tion, or  a  weight  of  suffering,  whicli  we  look 
upon  with  wonder  and  almost  with  terror. 
We  shudder  to  think  of  mortals  like  ourselves 
having  been  brought  into  such  fearful  dilemmas 
between  obedience  and  guilt.  We  slnink  from 
placing  ourselves  but  in  imagination  under 
such  tests  of  fidelity  to  God  and  a  good  cause. 
The  painful  sympathy  with  those  agents  and 
sufferers  terminates  in  self-congTatulation,  that 
their  allotment  of  duty  has  not  been  ours. 
The  tacit  sentiment  is,  I  am  very  glad  I  can 
be  a  good  man  on  less  severe  conditions. 

And  the  sentiment  Is  justified  by  the  neces- 
sary and  eternal  laws  of  our  nature.  It  may 
become  an  emotion  of  piety,  and  rise  in  grati- 
tude to  God  for  having  appointed  us  to  a  less 
formidable  service.     But  it  may  also  be  in- 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  H 

dulged  In  such  a  manner  as  to  betray  us  into 
dangerous  delusion.  In  pleasing  ourselves 
with  the  thought  of  our  exemption  from  an 
order  of  duties  involving  the  sacrifice  of  every 
thing  gratifying  in  mortal  existence  but  a  good 
conscience,  —  duties  to  be  performed  at  the 
cost  of  suffering  oppressive  and  unmitigated 
toil,  pain,  want,  reproach,  loss  of  liberty  and 
even  of  life  itself,  —  duties  imposing  such  a 
trial  of  fidelity  as  confessors  and  martyrs  have 
sustained,  —  we  may  be  led  into  a  wrong 
estimate  of  the  difference  between  their  situa- 
tion and  ours,  as  if  our  obligations  were  consti- 
tuted under  an  essentially  different  economy. 
With  an  unthinking  self-assurance  that  the 
satisfaction  we  feel  is  gratitude  to  God  for  a 
less  rigorous  appointment,  we  may  be  makino- 
exemptions  for  ourselves  which  he  has  never 
made.  Dehghted  that  at  the  easy  price  of 
only  being  thankful  to  him,  ^ve  are  allowed  to 
take  so  much  indulgence,  we  may  with  a 
deluded  confidence  widen  out  the  sphere  of 
privilege  beyond  one  point,  and  beyond  anoth- 
er, where  he  has  marked  the  boundary ;  with 
always  the  strongest  propensity  to  this  enlarge- 


12  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

ment  on  that  side  where  the  hardest  duties  are 
placed  ;  till  the  mind  at  length  reposes  in  a 
scheme  of  duty  adjusted  on  its  own  authority, 
and  far  from  coincident  with  that  w^hich  has 
been  dictated  by  the  divine  will. 

There  is  delusion  in  our  self-congratulation 
at  the  contrast  between  what  is  enjoined  on  us 
and  the  severer  duties  imposed  on  some  of  our 
great  Master's  subjects,  if  we  do  not  perceive 
that,  nevertheless,  the  matter  of  our  required 
service  is  of  the  very  same  substance,  (with 
only  a  favourable  difference  of  mode  and  pro- 
portion,) as  that  which  appears  to  us  of  such 
rigour  in  theirs.  There  is  delusion,  if  we  are 
permitted  to  escape  from  the  habitual  sense  of 
being,  in  the  character  of  the  servants  of  God, 
placed  under  the  duty  and  necessity  of  an 
intense  moral  warfare,  against  powers  of  evil 
as  real  and  palpable  as  ever  w^ere  encountered 
in  the  field  of  battle.  Not  to  feel  ourselves 
pressed  upon  by  resistless  evidence  and  admo- 
nition of  this,  is  an  utter  ignorance  or  oblivion 
of  our  commission  on  earth.  And  the  natural 
consequence  is  a  fate  like  that  of  strangers 
thoughtlessly  straying  and  surrendering  them- 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF   MISSIONS.  13 

selves  to  sleep,  In  a  place  where  it  is  a  law  of 
the  barbarian  inhabitants  to  sacrifice  all  stran- 
gers to  their  infernal  gods. 

Yet  there  is  in  general  so  faint  an  impression 
of  this  fact,  of  an  urgent  necessity  of  war  till 
death,  as  the  gi-and  business  and  obligation  of 
life,  that,  to  the  greater  number  of  the  persons 
to  whom  we  offer  illustrations  of  Christian 
topics,  no  language  sounds  so  idly,  no  figiu'es 
appear  so  insignificant,  no  forms  of  common- 
place so  "  flat  and  unprofitable,"  as  those 
which  represent,  in  a  military  character,  the 
exertions  by  which  men  are  to  evince  them- 
selves the  servants  of  God.  An  appeal  might 
safely  be  made  to  the  consciousness  of  many 
hearers  and  readers  whether,  at  the  recurrence 
of  these  images  in  any  religious  reference,  they 
have  not  a  marked  sense  of  insipidity  strongly 
tending  to  disgust,  caused,  in  some  degree,  we 
may  allow,  by  a  too  frequent  iteration,  but 
still  more  by  the  impression  of  unmeaningness 
and  futility  in  employing  such  terms  for  such 
a  subject. 

It  is  striking  to  observe,  at  the  same  tim.e, 
how  some  of  the  persons  who  are  thus  tired  to 


14  THE  GLORY   OF  TflE  AGE, 

loathino^  of  these  images  in  their  moral  and 
spiritual  application,  will  disclose  their  latent 
energy  at  similar  language  and  figures  coming 
before  them  in  literal  representation  of  war. 
Most  of  the  exciteable  class  of  spirits,  whether 
in  youth  or  much  more  advanced  in  life,  can 
be  kindled  to  enthusiasm  by  the  grand  imagery 
of  battles  and  heroic  achievements.  Those 
very  terms  of  martial  metaphor,  under  the 
spiritual  import  of  which  they  are  beginning, 
perhaps  amidst  some  religious  service,  to  sink 
in  dulness  and  disgust,  may  give  them  sudden 
relief  by  diverting  the  mind  aw^ay  to  an  im- 
agined scene  of  conflict ;  and  it  shall  feel  a 
proud  elation  in  passing  from  the  stale  and 
sleepy  notion  of  a  spiritual  warfare,  to  the 
magnificence  of  the  combats  which  are  display- 
ed in  fire  and  blood  to  the  eyes,  and  in  thunder 
to  the  ears.  The  attention  being  wholly  with- 
drawn from  the  strain  which  is  perhaps  still 
proceeding,  in  words  no  longer  sensibly  heard, 
to  figure  out  the  Christian  soldier,  the  imagina- 
tion shall  follow^  the  track  of  some  brilliant 
mortal,  of  history  or  fiction,  through  scenes  of 
tumult,  and  terror,  and  noble  daring,  and  shall 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MLSSIONS.  15 

adore  him  as  beheld  exulting  unhurt  in  victory, 
or  as  expiring  in  the  manner  in  which  it  is  by 
general  consent  accounted  graceful  for  a  hero 
to  fall.  The  enthusiast,  while  sitting  still  and 
abstracted,  may  be  at  moments  enchanted  into 
a  kind  of  personation  of  the  character,  and 
glow  with  emotion  in  tlie  mimic  fancy  of  acting 
himself  a  part  so  splendid.  And  these  scenes 
of  fury  and  destruction,  thus  fervidly  imagined, 
shall  really  be  deemed  the  sublimest  exhibi- 
tions of  man,  in  which  human  energy  ap- 
proaches nearest  to  a  rivalry  with  the  "  immor- 
tals,"—  for  the  epic  diction  of  paganism  may 
naturally  be  the  expression  of  sentiments  fired 
by  its  spirit.  "  Immortal,"  may  be  also  the 
word  which  he  is  silently  pronouncing  in  his 
adoration  of  the  personage  whose  career  he  is 
pursuing  in  reverie  ;  conformably  to  that  ca- 
price of  human  madness,  which  has  determined 
the  special  selection  of  such  an  epithet  for 
bedecking  the  most  active  dealers  in  death, 
whose  exposure  to  be  smitten  by  it  is  an 
inevitable  condition  of  their  inflicting  it. 

If,  in  this  inflamed  state  of  the  mind,  the 
idea  were  agam  presented  of  the    Christian 


16  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

warfare,  of  a  contest  against  principalities  and 
powers,  and  spiritual  wickedness,  it  would  be 
repelled  with  disdain  of  the  impertinence  or 
arrogance  which  could  assume  for  such  matters 
any  of  the  lofty  terms  belonging,  and,  (it  would 
be  proudly  said,)  deservedly  applied,  to  the 
transactions  of  Trafalgar  and  Waterloo.  This 
contempt  may  be  felt  by  persons  to  whom  the 
glories  of  war  are  only  a  pageant  of  the  imagi- 
nation ;  but  it  would  be  a  still  stronger  senti- 
ment in  most  of  the  men  who  have  actually 
witnessed  and  shared  the  terrors  and  triumphs 
of  martial  exploit,  if  it  could  happen  that  they 
should  hear  the  figurative  language  in  question, 
and  lend  for  a  moment  attention  enough  to 
understand  what  it  should  mean.  In  short, 
between  distaste  for  its  insipidity,  and  almost 
resentful  scorn  of  its  impertinence  of  preten- 
sion, the  metaphor  would  be,  by  most  men  of 
high-toned  spirit,  flung  back  on  the  imbecile 
religionists,  as  an  inane  fancy,  in  which  they 
are  seeking  to  make  for  themselves  a  compen- 
sation for  their  incapacity  of  any  thing  truly 
great.  Let  these  wars,  enemies,  and  heroes 
of  vapour,  they  would  say,  busy  the  feeble 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIOXB.  17 

souls  to  which  they  can  have  the  effect  of 
reahties.  ^ 

But  while   this  is  their  feeling,  what  shall 
we  think  of  the   sanity  of  their  perception  ? 
Alas  for  the  state  of  the  senses,  of  the  faculties 
of  apprehension,  in  those  minds  that  have  so 
little  cognizance  of  a  most  fearful  reality  which 
exists  on  every  side,  and  presses  upon  them  ! 
How  strange  it  is  to  see  men  in  possession  of 
a    quick    and    vigilant    faculty   for   perceiving 
every  thing  that  can  approach  them  in  hostility, 
except  that  nearest,   deadliest,   and  mightiest 
enemy  of  all,  jMoral  Evil.     And  how  deplora- 
ble to  see  them  prompt  in  indignation,  instantly 
in  the   attitude  of  defence  or  attack,  burning 
w^ith  martial  spirit,   inspired  with    notions   of 
glory  and  victory,  and  at  the  same  time  turning 
away  with  slight  or  scorn  at  the  representations, 
by  which  divine  or  human  admonition  is  at- 
tempting to  alarm  them  to  a  sense   of  their 
danger  from  that  fofr,  compared  with  which  all 
the  rest  are  but  shapes  of  air  !     That  creatures 
should  be  thus  maddened  with  fancies  of  the 
glory  of  destructive  combats  with  one  another, 
and  insensible  of  the  presence  and  quality  of 
3 


18  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

that  destroyer  which  is  invading  them  all,  is 
truly  a  sight  for  the  most  malignant  beings  in 
the  creation  to  exult  over.  It  is  a  spectacle 
of  still  darker  character  than  that  which  would 
have  been  presented  by  opposed  anned  parties 
or  legions,  gallantly  maintaining  batde  on  the 
yet  uncovered  spaces  of  ground,  while  the 
universal  flood  was  rising. 

Alas  !  we  must  repeat,  for  the  stupified 
intellio^ence  of  those  minds  which  can  regard 
as  idle  extravagance  this  language  which  would 
arouse  their  attention  to  what  is  as  certainly  a 
reality  as  their  own  existence,  and  will  infallibly 
make  the  most  fatal  proof  of  its  power  on  the 
spirits,  the  least  aware  that  the  destroyer  is  at 
hand .  What  a  renovation  of  perceptive  faculty 
is  necessary  to  that  being  who  would  ask, 
either  in  levity  or  ignorant  surprise.  What  and 
where  is  that  foe,  so  malignant  and  powerful  ? 
— while  there  is  exposed  in  full  view  the 
mighty  mass,  and  force,  and  operation,  of  all 
that  depraves  and  ruins  the  souls  of  men. 
The  insensibility  to  this  fact  as  existing,  and 
as  being  incomparably  the  most  awful  phe- 
nomenon on  earthj  would  itself  betray,  in  such 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  19 

a  negation  of  moral  intuition,  the  intervention 
of  the  very  enemy  described.  Let  a  thought- 
ful man  survey  the  world  of  mankind,  and  see 
what  there  is  universally  among  them  to  excite 
the  sad  exclamation,  "  Wo  to  the  inhabitants 
of  the  earth  !"  Let  him  deeply  consider  what 
it  is  that  he  is  beholding,  while  he  observes 
this  power  of  evil  assailing,  and  committing 
grievous  mischief  upon,  every  human  being, 
his  experience  testifying  that  himself  is  not 
exempted.  Let  him  reflect  that  what  he  sees 
is  an  operation  reducing  unnumbered  myriads 
of  rational  and  immortal  creatures  to  a  state  so 
much  worse  than  that  which  would  be  the  right 
and  happy  condition  of  their  being,  that  there 
is  nothing  in  all  merely  terrestrial  things  ade- 
quate to  furnish,  by  a  contrast  between  extremes, 
a  measure  for  the  difference.  He  is  to  fomi 
his  judgment  of  the  gloomy  fact  under  his  view, 
on  an  estimate  of  the  injury  done  to  each  one, 
and  of  the  number  so  injured,  including  in  the 
account  the  generations  of  all  past  time.  And 
let  him  try  whether  an  earnest  and  protracted 
attention  to  the  dire  exhibition  will  detect  a 
fallacy  in  its  dreadful  aspect,  so  that  his  last 


20  THE   GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

sober  judgment  shall  be  like  the  relief  of  recov- 
ering by  the  aid  of  reason,  from  a  superstitions 
terror.  No  ;  he  will  find,  uniformly,  that  the 
evil  reveals  itself  to  him  in  still  more  substantial 
and  deadly  character,  the  longer  his  mind  fixes 
with  close  and  solemn  inspection  on  any  of  its 
mnumerable  forms.  The  impression  thus  rein- 
forced by  stronger  demonstration  might  become 
too  aggravated  to  be  borne,  if  there  were  to  be 
suddenly  imparted  to  him  a  great  addition  of 
religious  light  and  sensibility,  through  which 
he  should  receive,  while  contemplating  this 
vision  of  evil,  a  brighter  manifestation  of  the 
holiness  of  God,  and  the  perfection  of  his  law\ 
And  even  such  a  view  as  would  overpower 
the  firmest  mind,  might  still  be  but  a  faint 
apprehension  compared  with  the  perception  of 
some  superior  pure  intelligence  looking  on  this 
world ;  and  how  much  more  so  in  comparison 
with  the  thought  and  feeling  with  which  the 
Redeemer  beheld  the  error  and  depravity  of 
our  race.  No  language  nor  imao;es  for  com- 
municating  information  in  any  world,  can  ever 
represent  his  estimate  of  the  scene.  But  that 
was  the  only  adequate  apprehension  of  it.     In 


OR   THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSION'S.  21 

whatever  degree,  therefore,  its  portentous 
qiiahty  is  manifested  to  the  view  of  a  rehgious 
observer,  he  will  always  be  certain  that  there 
is  in  it  a  depth  of  evil  still  beyond  the  capacity 
of  his  thought ;  while  in  that  which  he  does 
apprehend,  he  perceives  a  magnitude  and  atro- 
city which  can  be  but  feebly  expressed  by 
borrowing  terms  from  circumstances  the  most 
odious  and  dreadful  in  material  existence,  and 
saying,  that  the  multitude  of  human  souls  are 
invaded,  robbed,  polluted,  chained,  tormented, 
or  murdered. 

Sometimes  we  contemplate,  perhaps,  the 
mighty  progress  of  destruction,  as  carried  over 
a  large  tract  of  the  earth  by  some  of  the 
memorable  instruments  of  the  di\ine  A\Tath, 
such  as  Attila,  Zingis  Khan,  or  Timour.  We 
behold  a  wide  spreading  terror  preceding,  to 
be  soon  followed  by  the  realization  of  every 
alarming  presage,  in  resisdess  ravage  and  exter- 
mination. Numberless  crowds  come  tumultu- 
ously  to  our  view,  in  all  the  varieties  of  dismay, 
and  vain  effort,  and  suffering,  and  death  ;  a 
world  of  ghastly  countenances,  desperate  strug- 
gles, lamentable  cries,   streaming  blood,  and 


22  THE   GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

expiring  agonies  ;  with  the  corresponding  cir- 
cumstances of  fury  and  triumph,  and  the 
appropriate  scenery  of  habitations  burning  and 
the  land  made  a  desert.  And  while  one  gen- 
eral character  of  horror  is  spread  over  the 
immensity  of  the  scene,  the  imagined  forms 
and  aspects  of  individual  victims,  frequently 
marked  forth  from  the  confused  aggregate,  and 
presented  to  the  mind  in  momentary  glimpses, 
as  vivid  points  of  impression,  give  an  effect 
of  reality  to  the  \isionary  spectacle  of  misery 
and  destruction. 

When  a  man  of  ardent  imagination  has 
dwelt  upon  such  a  scene  till  it  almost  glows 
into  actual  existence  in  his  view,  let  him  be 
assured  it  is  the  language  of  truth  and  sober- 
ness that  affiiiTis  this  spectacle  to  form  but  a 
faint  and  inadequate  image,  for  representing 
that  other  invasion  which  is  made  upon  the 
spirits  of  all  mankind  ;  that  invasion  of  which, 
indeed,  all  these  horrors  are  themselves  but  a 
few  of  the  exterior  circumstances  and  results. 
And  yet  creatures  assailed  and  in  dan  o'er  of 
destruction  by  this  more  awful  calamity,  sur- 
veying in  fancy,  and  shuddering  while  they 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  23 

survey,  these  furies  and  miseries  of  remote 
times  or  regions,  shall  bless  their  good  fortune 
that  they  are  not  exposed  to  any  persecution  of 
evil  a  thousandth  part  so  formidable  ! 

When  following  in  thought  those  perpetra- 
tors of  devastation  and  carnage,  we  have  the 
consolation  of  foreseeing  its  end.  The  Caesars 
and  Attllas  were  as  mortal  as  the  millions  who 
expired  to  give  them  fame.  Of  Timour,  the 
language  of  the  Historian,  kindling  into  poetry, 
relates  that  "  he  pitched  his  last  camp  at  Otrar, 
where  he  was  expected  by  the  Angel  of 
Death."*  But  the  power  that  w^ages  war 
immediately  on  the  souls  of  men,  the  power 
of  depravity  and  delusion  combined,  has  con- 
tinued to  live  and  destroy  w^hile  all  these 
renowned  exterminators  have  yielded  to  the 
decree  that  sent  them  after  their  victims.  It 
is  perpetually  invigorated  by  the  very  destmc- 
tion  which  it  works  ;  as  if  it  fed  upon  the  slain 
to  strengthen  itself  for  new  slaughter,  and 
absorbed  into  its  own,  every  life  which  it  takes 
away.     For  it  is  in  the  nature  of  moral  evil, 

*  Gibbon, 


24  THE   GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

as  acting  on  human  beings,  to  create  to  itself 
new  facilities,  means,  and  force,  for  prolonging 
that  action.     From  ihe^effects  there  is  contin- 
ually reflected  back  an  augmentation  of  power 
to  the  cause  ;    a  circumstance   explained  by 
the  fatal  aptitude  of  the  subject  operated  upon 
to  give  its  own  strength   to   aid  the  pernicious 
agency.     The  injured  subject, — the  corrupted 
nature, — still  less  and  less,  at  each  return  of 
the  injurer,  thinks  of  suspecting  or  resisting ; 
still  more  and  more  effectually  contributes  that 
the  malignity  may  not  be  frustrated.     So  that 
the  power  of  sin  acquires  over  those  who  are 
surrendered  to  it  a  more  decided  predominance 
in  each   stage  of  their    progress,  and  makes 
confirmed  8^surance  of  what  they  will  be  in 
the  next,  unless  prevented  by  something  for- 
eign to  their  own  moral  nature.     And  since 
the  majority  of  human  beings   have    always 
been  under  this  power,  what  a  security  it  has 
possessed  for  prolonging  its  empire  of  destruc- 
tion !     What  a  security,  in  the  principle  by 
which,  in  every  period,  the  greater  number  of 
all  mankind  were,   as  individuals,  incessantly 
growing   worse  1      And   to   what   a   dreadful 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  25 

perfection  of  evil  might  such  a  race  attain  but 
for  Death,  that  cuts  the  term  of  individuals  so 
short,  and  but  for  the  Spirit  of  God,  that  con- 
verts some,  and  puts  a  degree  of  restraint  on 
the  rest. 

And  now,  if  there  is  really  thus  in  action, 
against  the  souls  of  our  race,  such  an  enemy 
as  all  these  epithets  and  images  can  but  faintly 
represent,  can  a  professed  servant  of  God  look 
round,  and  felicitate  himself  on  ha\ang  an  ex- 
tremely easy  test  of  his  fidelity  ?  Where  does 
he  find  his  privileged  ground  of  immunity  and 
indulgence,  while  this  mighty  force  of  evil 
drives  and  sweeps  and  rages  against  God,  and 
truth,  against  goodness  and  happiness,  his  own 
spirit  and  all  men's  spirits,  as  really  as  ever  he 
that  was  named  the  scourge  of  God  ravaged 
the  countries  of  Asia  and  Europe  ?  In  seeking 
such  exemption  he  must  abandon  all  the  objects 
and  interests  against  which  this  hostility  is 
directed ;  must  therefore  compromise  and  in 
efl:ect  co-operate  \\ith  the  enemy.  Let  him 
consider  what  scheme  it  is  possible  to  conceive 
of  true  service  to  the  Kmg  of  Heaven  in  this 
bad  world,  which  should  not  commit  him  in 
4 


26  THE  GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

conflict  at  every  point  of  its  execution. 
Against  every  good  lie  can  think  of,  he  ^vill 
find  an  appropriate  antagonist  evil  already  in 
full  action,  an  action  that  will  not  remit  and 
sink  into  quiet  when  he  approaches  to  effect 
the  intended  good.  Nay,  indeed,  in  what  way 
is  it  that  the  servant  of  God  the  most  readily 
apprehends  the  nature  of  his  vocation  but  in 
that  of  seeing  what  it  is  against  ?  And  when 
he  puts  the  matter  to  experimental  proof,  does 
he  ever  find  that  those  apprehended  adversa- 
ries are  nothino-  but  menacino;  shadows  ?  Let 
him  that  has  made  the  most  determined,  pro- 
tracted, and  extensive  trial,  tell  whether  it  is 
idle  common-place  and  extravagance  when  we 
say  that  all  Christian  exhortation  is  in  truth  a 
summons  to  war. 

There  are  many  modes  of  the  action  of  this 
grand  enemy,  moral  evil,  which  press  so  inniie- 
diately  on  a  man's  own  personal  concern,  that 
a  habitual  conflict  with  them  is  an  essential 
condition  of  the  Christian  character :  a  practical 
question  of  hostility  or  acquiescence  is  imph- 
cated  witli  the  ordinary  course   of  his   self- 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF   MISSIONS.  27 

government.  There  are  other  forms,  of  great 
magnitude  and  hatefulness,  existing  in  the 
world,  which  do  not  so  directly  force  them- 
selves into  the  question  of  his  being  a  Christian 
or  not.  In  judgment  and  feehng  he  must  be, 
of  coui-se,  their  implacable  enemy.  But  since 
they  throw  no  temptation  in  his  way,  have  the 
sphere  of  their  malignant  operation  at  a  great 
distance,  leave  a  very  wide  space  clear  for 
Christian  exercise,  and  may  seem  also,  by  their 
vastness  and  consoHdated  establishment,  to  be 
placed  the  very  last  of  all  things  that  individu- 
als can  account  themselves  competent  to  attack, 
—  to  be  as  enormous  mountains  limiting  their 
field,  —  it  may  be  acknowledged  a  matter  of 
somewhat  less  defineable  obligation  in  what 
degree  he  shall  actively  expend  his  animosity 
upon  them.  The  exhortation  to  apply  a  share 
of  his  efforts  in  that  direction,  may  be  consid- 
ered as  partly  an  appeal  to  those  higher  senti- 
ments of  the  religious  spirit  which  aspire  to 
tlie  full  magnanimity  and  zeal  of  the  Christian 
character.  It  is  an  admonition  to  the  professed 
adherents  of  Him  who  came  on  earth  with  a 
design  extending  in  hostility,  without  limit  or 


28  THE   GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

exception,  to  every  thing  adverse  to  goodness 
and  pernicious  to  the  human  soul,  that  if  all 
the  moral  evil  in  the  world  is  not  acting  imme- 
diately against  them,  it  is  against  Him  ;  and 
that  it  is  most  reasonable  that  one  of  the  laws 
of  their  devotion  to  him  should  be,  to  identify 
themselves  with  him  in  the  practical  warfare 
to  the  widest  scope  which  is  really  open  to 
their  enterprise.  It  is  an  incitement  to  their 
ambition,  not  to  leave  it  to  be  ever  said  again, 
with  respect  to  any  part  of  his  operations 
against  evil  among  men,  that  he  trod  the  wine- 
press alone,  and  that  of  the  people  there  was 
none  with  him. 

When  animated  to  this  high  and  adventurous 
spirit,  a  good  man  may  wonder  that  the  Heath- 
enism prevailing  over  large  tracts  of  the  world 
should  so  httle  have  been,  in  this  country  or 
other  Protestant  nations,  till  a  comparatively, 
recent  time,  accounted  as  comprehended  within 
the    sphere    of  required  Christian  exertion."^ 


*  The  indifference  of  Protestants  was  not  for  want  of 
examples,  such  as  they  were,  of  actiAdty  in  this  depart- 
ment. It  was  very  well  known  that  there  had  been 
various  missionary  enterprises  under  the  appointment 
of  the  Romish  Church.     And  certain  individuals  em- 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  29 

One  most  amiable  fraternity,  indeed,  whose 
gentleness  at  home  involves  a  principle  by 
which  it  glows  into  energy  and  heroism  in 
proportion  to  the  remoteness  of  the  distance, 
and  the  barbarousness  and  ruggedness  of  the 
field  of  action,  to  which  it  is  voluntarily  exiled, 
have  made  missions  to  the  Heathens  an  essen- 
tial part  of  their  institution.  But  in  general, 
the  friends  of  religion  seem  to  have  regarded 
those  great  maladies  of  the  moral  world,  the 
delusions  and  abominations  of  paganism,  with 
a  sort  of  submissive  awe,  as  if,  almost,  they 
had  established  a  prescriptive  right  to  the  place 
they  have  held  so  long ;  or  as  if  they  were 
part  of  an  unchangeable,  uncontrollable  order 


ployed  in  those  missions  were  held  worthy  of  perpetual 
remembrance  for  their  invincible  perseverance,  and 
for  a  share,  it  was  fair  to  believe,  of  a  truly  Christian 
principle  in  the  motives  which  actuated  them.  But 
when  these  undertakings  were  viewed  in  their  general 
character,  it  was  so  notorious  thr.t  they  were,  aa  to  the 
prevailing  motive,  projects  of  hierarchical  ambition,  and 
that,  in  their  mode  of  prosecution,  they  accommodated, 
wilh  the  corruptest  policy,  to  the  paganism  they  pro- 
fessed to  convert;  and  introduced  a  great  deal  of  what 
was  no  better  than  paganism  of  their  own,  that  Pro- 
testants could  hardly  regard  them  as  Christian  projects  ; 
and  tb.erefore  felt  no  stimulus  at  the  view  of  their 
activity,  and  derived  nothing  to  excite  hope  from  the 
boasts,  or  the  facts,  of  their  success. 


30  THE  GLORY  OF  THE   AGE, 

of  nature,  like  the  noxious  climates  of  certain 
portions  of  the  globe,  and  the  liableness  in 
others  to  the  terrors  of  earthquake.  Or  at 
least,  when  these  religious  men  have  looked 
on  these  mighty  forms  of  darkness  and  iniquity, 
as  destined  to  vanish  at  some  time  from  the 
scenes  of  which  they  have  been  so  long  the 
curse,  and  have  prayed  for  that  time  to  be 
hastened  on,  they  have  found  themselves  an- 
ticipating and  invoking,  with  undefined  concep- 
tion, some  entirely  unwonted  and  even  properly 
miraculous  mode  of  divine  interposition,  and 
have  felt  as  if  it  would  be  for  men  to  stand  off 
and  see  what  God  can  do  ; — in  this  very  feel- 
ing perhaps  admitting  on  their  minds,  in  a 
degree,  the  imposition  through  which  a  defect 
of  faith  and  zeal  may  be  mistaken  for  humility 
and  devotion. 

Within  a  later  period,*however,  (within  that, 
chiefly,  which  has  shown,  on  so  vast  a  scale, 
the  availableness  of  human  agency  for  over- 
turning things  of  ancient,  and  w^ide,  and  com- 
manding establishment  in  the  world,)  many 
good  men  have  begun  to  regard  with  much 
less  prostration  of  feeling,  those  gigantic  "  dom- 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  31 

illations"  which  have  for  so  many  ages  held  so 
many  nations  in  the  debasement  of  superstition. 
It  came  to  be  questioned  why  a  servant  of 
Christ  should  shrink  fi-om  looking  any  of  the 
powers  of  darkness  in  the  face,  from  defying 
them  in  his  Master's  name,  or  from  making  the 
experiment  of  an  application  of  Heaven's  own 
fire  to  their  abhoned  establishments  of  deceit 
and  wickedness,  in  which  the  souls  of  men  are 
destroyed.  In  proportion  as  the  imaginary 
defence  around  these  tyrannies  over  the  mind 
was  falling,  in  proportion  as  the  reputed 
guardianship  of  fate  or  infernal  power  which 
had  seemed  to  render  them  inviolable,  was 
breaking  up,  the  idea  of  such  an  experiment 
on  them  assumed  a  less  visionary  appearance. 
It  took  a  distinct  character  of  evident  practica- 
bility ;  and  then  it  grew  to  a  con\iction  of  duty 
in  some  of  those  to  whom  the  cause  of  Heaven 
was  the  object  of  highest  concern  on  earth. 

This  impression  was  strongly  felt  by  the 
first  movers  of  the  project  of  that  Mission  to 
India,  w^hich  we  cannot  hesitate  to  represent 
as  one  of  the  most  rational  and  efficient  enter- 
prises  of  the  enlarging   Christian  ambition  to 


32  THE   GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

make  war  on  the  greatest  and  most  Inveterate 
evils  of  the  moral  world.  When  awaked,  as 
it  were,  to  behold  an  ampler  view  of  the  world 
as  a  field  of  activity  for  the  zealots  for  the  best 
cause,  they  were  struck  with  surprise  at  seeing 
so  few  adventuring  into  the  distance  against 
the  most  ancient  and  vast  dominion  of  pagan- 
ism ;  and  they  thought  it  high  time  that  an 
end  should  be  put  to  the  quietude  of  sentiment, 
the  antichristian  tolerance,  toward  what  was  so 
proudly  and  with  impunity  standing  in  defiance 
of  that  cause. 

The  odious  quality  and  the  strength  of  this 
possessor  of  so  wide  a  realm  and  so  many 
slaves,  were  evident  enough  under  a  very 
iiTQperfect  exposure,  to  place  the  meditated 
experiment  of  hostility  greatly  out  of  the  com- 
mon calculations  of  Chnstian  daring.  It  could 
not  but  appear  so  far  beyond  those  ordinary 
presumptions,  as  to  provoke  the  contempt  of 
those  who  have  no  notion  of  the  interference 
of  the  Divine  power  in  aid  of  such  a  project ; 
so  far  beyond  them,  indeed,  as  to  insure  an 
entire  defeat  if  it  were  undertaken  in  depend- 
ence on  any  other  than  that  superior  strength. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  33 

Yet  the  information  possessed  at  that  time, 
by  even  the  cultivated  part  of  the  nation,  had 
not  sufficed  to  give  any  thing  approaching  to 
an  adequate  idea  of  the  superstition  and  de- 
pra\dty  of  the  people  of  Hindoostan.  It  has 
been  chiefly  during  the  period  since  this  Mis- 
sion was  commenced,  and  in  a  considerable 
degree  in  consequence  of  the  discussions  and 
the  exposition  of  evidence  occasioned  by 
animosity  against  it,  that  a  rapidly  increasing 
knowledge  has  brought  the  general  opinion  to 
that  judgment  of  the  character  and  condition 
of  the  Hindoos,  which  the  translations  made 
ii'om  their  sacred  books  by  the  missionaries 
and  other  eastern  scholars,  and  the  reports  of 
travellers  reduced  at  last  to  the  necessity  of 
being  honest,  are  fast  contributing  to  place 
beyond  all  controversy.  If  there  was  in  so 
old  and  well  examined  a  thing  as  human  na- 
ture no  undetected  perversity,  for  these  dis- 
closures to  bring  to  light  as  a  new  principle 
of  evil,  they  have,  however,  shown  some  of 
its  known  evil  principles  inhering  and  opera- 
ting in  it  with  such  an  absoluteness  of  pos- 
sessive power,  and  displaying  this  despotism 
5 


34  THE   GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

in  such  wantonly  versatile,  extravagant,  and 
monstrous  effects,  as  to  surpass  all  our  pre- 
vious imaginations  and  measures  of  possibility. 
The  enlarged  information  has  placed  before 
us,  as  constituting  the  actual  state  of  a  prodig- 
ious mass  of  human  existence,  an  exhibition  of 
such  things,  as  it  would  have  seemed  to  require 
a  super-human  genius  for  inventing  shapes  of 
degradation  and  absurdity  to  have  figured  as 
dreams  of  fancy. 

There  is  much  in  the  Hindoo  system  that 
is  strikingly  peculiar ;  but  as  it  is  the  substan- 
tial greatness  of  the  evil,  rather  than  its  spe- 
cific discrimination,  that  requires  to  be  pre- 
sented to  the  view  of  Christian  zeal,  much  of 
the  stress  of  our  brief  observations  will  be  laid 
on  properties  which  are  common  to  this  with 
the  other  principal  modes  of  paganism.  The 
object  is  rather  to  display  the  system  in  its 
strength  of  pernicious  operation,  than  to  at- 
tempt any  explanatory  statement  of  its  precise 
materials  or  construction.  There  needs  no 
great  length  of  description,  since  the  commu- 
nications of  missionaries,  and  various  other 
works  pubhshed  within  the   last   few   years, 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIOXS.  35 

have  made  all  who  take  any  interest  in  the 
subject  familiarly  acquainted  with  the  promi- 
nent features  of  the  heathenism  of  central 
Asia.  As  for  the  possible  attainment  of  any 
thing  like  a  complete  knowledge,  it  may  defy 
all  human  faculty  ;  which  faculty  besides,  if 
it  might  search  the  universe  for  choice  of  sub- 
jects-, could  find  nothing  less  worth  its  efforts 
for  knowledge.  The  system,  if  so  it  is  to  be 
called,  appears,  to  a  cursory  inquirer  at  least, 
an  utter  chaos,  without  top,  or  bottom,  or 
centre,  or  any  dimension  or  proportion,  be- 
lono-ino;  either  to  matter  or  mind,  and  con- 
sisting  of  materials  which  certainly  deserve  no 
better  order.  It  gives  one  the  idea  of  immen- 
sity filled  with  what  is  not  of  the  value  of  an 
atom.  It  is  the  most  remarkable  exemplifica- 
tion of  the  possibility  of  making  the  grandest 
ideas  contemptible  by  conjunction  ;  for  that  of 
infinity  is  here  combined  with  the  very  abstract 
of  worthlessness. 

But,  deserving  of  all  contempt  as  it  is,  re- 
garded merely  as  a  farrago  of  notions  and 
fantasies,  it  becomes  a  thing  for  detestation 
and  earnest  hostility  when  viewed  in  its  prac- 


36  THE   GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

tical  light,  as  the  governing  scheme  of  princi- 
ples and  rites  to  a  large  portion  of  our  race. 
Consider  that  there  is  thus  acting  upon  them, 
as  religion,  a  system  which  is  in  nearly  all  its 
properties  that  which  the  true  religion  is  not, 
and  in  many  of  them  the  exact  reverse.  Look 
at  your  religion,  presented  in  its  bright  attri- 
butes before  you,  reflecting  those  of  its  Author; 
and  then  realize  to  your  minds,  as  far  as  you 
can,  the  condition  of  so  many  millions  of  human 
spirits  receiving,  without  intermission,  from 
infancy  to  the  hour  of  death,  the  full  influence 
of  the  direct  opposites  to  these  di\dne  princi- 
ples,— a  contrast  of  condition  but  faintly 
typified  by  that  between  the  Israelites  and  the 
Egyptians  in  beholding,  on  the  difterent  sides, 
the  pillar  in  its  appearance  over  the  Red  Sea. 
Consider  in  comparison  the  intellectual  and 
moral  systems  under  which  we  and  they  are 
passing  forward  to  another  world.  While  ours 
has,  as  its  solar  light  and  glory,  the  doctrine  of 
One  Being  in  whom  all  perfections  are  united 
and  infinite,  theirs  scatters  that  which  is  the 
most  precious  and  vital  sentiment  of  the  human 
soul  and  of  any  created  intelligence,  that  is, 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  37 

the  affection  which  regards  Deity,  to  an 
indefinite  multitude  and  diversity  of  adored 
objects  ;*  the  one  system  carrying  the  spirit 
downward  to  utter  debasement,  through  that 
very  element  of  feeling  in  which  it  should  be 
exalted,  while  the  other,  when  in  full  influence, 
bears  it  upward  through  all  tilings  that  combine 
to  degrade  it.  The  relation  subsisting  between 
man  and  the  Divinity,  as  unfolded  to  view  in 
the  true  religion,  is  of  a  simple  and  solemn 
character ;  w^hereas  the  Brahminical  theory 
exhibits  this  relation  in  an  infinitely  confounded, 
flmtastic,  vexatious,  and  ludicrous  complexity. 
While  in  the  Christian  system  the  future  state 
of  man  is  declared  with  tlie  same  dignified 
simplicity,  the  opposed  paganism,  between 
some  inane  dream  of  an  aspiring  mysticism  oii 


*  A  faded  trace  of  primeval  truth  remains  in  their 
tlieolocT\-,  in  a  certain  inane  notion  of  a  Supreme  Spirit, 
distinguished  from  tlie  infinity  of  personifications  on 
which  the  reUo-ious  sentiment  is  wnsted,  and  from  those 
few  transcendent  demon  fioures  which  proudly  stand 
out  from  the  insignificance  of  the  swarm.  But  it  is 
unnecessary  to  say,  that  this  notion,  a  thin  remote 
abstraction,  as  a  mere  nchuUi.  in  the  Hindoo  heaven,  is 
quite  ineJlicient  for  sheddinor  one  salutary  ray  on 
the  spirits  infatuated  with  all  that  is  trivial  and  gross  in 
superstition. 


38  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

the  one  hand,  and  the  paltriest  conceits  of  a 
reptile  invention  on  the  other,  presents,  we 
might  say  sports,  this  subhrae  doctrine  and 
fact  in  the  shapes  of  whimsey  and  riddle. 
Ours  is  an  economy  according  to  which  religion, 
considered  as  in  its  human  subjects,  consists  in 
a  state  of  the  mind  instead  of  exterior  formali- 
ties ;  the  institutes  of  the  Hindoos  make  it 
chiefly  consist  in  a  miraculously  multiphed 
and  ramified  set  of  ritual  fooleries.  It  is  almost 
superfluous  to  notice  in  the  comparison,  that 
while  the  one  enjoins  and  promotes  a  perfect 
morality,  the  other  essentially  favours,  and 
even  formally  sanctions,  the  worst  vices.  It 
may  sufl^ce  to  add,  that  while  the  true  religion 
knows  nothing  of  any  precedence  in  the  Divine 
estimate  and  regard,  of  one  class  of  human 
creatures  before  another,  in  virtue  of  nativity 
or  any  mere  natural  distinction,  the  supersti- 
tion we  are  describing  has  rested  very  much  of 
its  power  upon  a  classification,  according  to 
which  one  considerable  proportion  of  the 
people  are,  by  the  very  circumstance  of  their 
birth,  morally  distinguished  as  holy  and  vene- 
rable, and  another  more  numerous  proportion. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  39 

as  base  and  contemptible,  sprung  from  the 
feet  of  the  creating  god,  that  they  might  be 
slaves  to  the  tribe  which  had  the  luck  and 
honour  to  spring  from  his  head. 

Such  is  this  aggregate  of  perversions  of  all 
thought,  and  feeling,  and  practice.  And  yet, 
the  system,  being  religion,  acts  on  its  subjects 
with  that  kind  of  power  which  is  appropriate 
and  peculiar  to  religion.  The  sense  which 
man,  by  the  very  constitution  of  his  nature, 
has  of  the  existence  of  some  super-human 
power,  is  one  of  the  strongest  principles  of 
that  nature  ;  whatever,  therefore,  takes  effec- 
tual hold  of  this  sense  will  go  far  toward 
acquiring  the  regency  of  his  moral  being. 
This  conjunction  of  so  many  delusions  does 
take  possession  of  this  sense  in  the  minds  of 
the  Hindoos,  with  a  mightier  force  than  prob- 
ably we  see  in  any  other  exhibition  of  the 
occupancy  of  religion,  on  a,  wide  scale,  in  the 
world.  But  to  the  power  which  the  supersti- 
tion has  in  thus  takinf]^  hold  of  the  relit^ious 
sense,  is  to  be  added  that  which  it  acquires  by 
another  and  a  dreadful  adaptation  ;  for  it  takes 
hold  also,  as  with  more  numerous  hands  than 


40  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

those  given  to  some  of  the  deities,  of  all  the 
corrupt  principles  of  the    heart.      What    an 
awful    consideration,    that   among   a   race    of 
rational  creatures,  a  religion  should  be  mighty 
almost  to   omnipotence  by  means,  in  a  great 
measure,  of  its  favourableness  to  evil  !     What 
a  melancholy  display  of  man,  that  the  two 
contrasted  \isitants  to  the  world,  the  one  from 
heaven,  the  other  deser\ing  by  its  qualities  to 
have  its   origin  referred  to  hell, — that  these 
two  coming  to  make  trial  of  their  respective 
"■  adaptations  and  affinities  upon  human  spirits, 
the   infernal  one   should  find  free  admission, 
through  congeniality,  to  the  possession  of  the 
whole  souls  of  immense  multitudes,  while  the 
one  fi'om  heaven  should  but  obtain  in  individ- 
uals,  here    and  there,  a  possession  which  is 
partial  at  the  best,  and  to  be  maintained  by  a 
conflict,  to  the   end  of  life,  against  implacably 
repugnant  principles  in  the  mind.     Well  may 
a  Christian  be  affected  with  the  most  humilia- 
ting emotion,  both  for  his  race  and  himself, 
while  he  reflects, — I  have   a  nature  which 
might  have  yielded   itself  entire   to   a  false 
religion,  but  so  reluctantly  and  partially  surren- 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  41 

ders  itself  to  the  true  one,  as  to  retain  me  in 
the  condition  of  having  it  for  the  chief  concern 
of  my  hfe  and  prayers  that  the  still  opposing 
dispositions  may  be  subdued. 

We  may  assume  it  as  a  fact,  too  obvious  to 
need  illustration  in  particulars,  that  this  super- 
siition,  while  it  commands  the  faith  of  its 
subjects,  completes  its  power  over  them  by 
its  accordance  to  their  pride,  malevolence, 
sensuality,  and  deceitfulness  ;  to  that  natural 
concomitant  of  pride,  the  baseness  which  is 
ready  to  prostrate  itself  in  homage  to  any 
thing  that  shall  put  itself  in  place  of  God  ; 
and  to  that  interest  which  criminals  feel  to 
transfer  their  own  accountableness  upon  the 
powers  above  them.  But  then  think  what  a 
condition  for  human  creatures  !  they  believe 
in  a  religion  which  invigorates,  by  coincidence 
and  sanction,  those  principles  in  their  nature 
which  the  true  religion  is  intended  to  destroy ; 
and  in  return,  those  principles  thus  strength- 
ened contribute  to  confirm  their  faith  in  the 
religion.  The  mischief  inflicted  becomes  the 
most  effectual  persuasion  to  confidence  in  the 
inflicter. 

6 


4*2  THE  GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

Observe,  again,  the  power  possessed  by 
this  stupendous  dekision  in  having  direct  hold 
on  the  senses,  in  so  many  ways,  even  exclu- 
sively of  the  grosser  means,  (the  grossest  pos- 
sible, as  you  are  apprised,)  of  which  it  avails 
itself  to  please  them.  It  has  infused  itself, 
as  it  were,  into  numberless  visible  object-, 
whence  it  emanates  in  a  continual  influence 
on  the  mind  through  the  senses,  having  made 
these  objects  expressive  and  representative  of 
religious  ideas.  All  the  vain  notions  of  the 
superstition  thus  stand  embodied  before  its 
devotees  in  material  phenomena,  which  are 
informed  with  a  significance  that  seems  to 
look  at  them  and  speak  to  them.  Presented 
to  them  in  these  sensible  types,  those  delu- 
sive ideas  occupy  their  faculties  sooner, 
almost,  than  they  can  think,  more  constantly 
than  they  think,  and  in  a  mode  of  possession 
stronger  than  mere  thought.  Indeed  it  is  a 
mode  of  possession  which,  (after  faith  has 
grown  into  the  habit  of  the  mind,)  may  be 
effectual  on  the  feelings  though  thought  be 
wanting  ;  for  we  may  presume  that  in  India, 
as  m  other  places,  when  external  forms  and 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MISSIONS.  43 

shows  have  been  admitted  as  symbols  of  sub- 
jects of  behef,  they  may  preserve  in  the  peo- 
ple much  of  the  moral  habitude  appropriate 
to  that  belief,  even  at  times  when  there  is  no 
strictly  intellectual  apprehension.  The  Hin- 
doo is  under  the  influence  of  this  enchantment 
upon  his  senses  almost  wherever  the  Christian 
remonstrance  against  the  dogmas  and  rites  of 
his  superstition  can  approach  him,  seeking 
access  to  his  reason  and  conscience.  The  man 
thus  attempting  may  have  read  idle  fictions 
of  magical  spells,  which  obstruct  the  passing 
of  some  line,  or  preclude  entrance  at  a  gate  ; 
but  here  he  may  perceive  a  real  intervening 
rnagic,  between  the  truth  he  brings,  and  the 
intellectual  and  moral  faculties  into  which 
he  wishes  to  introduce  it.  In  his  missionary 
progress  among  the  people,  perhaps  he  shall 
address  them  where  there  is  in  sight  some 
votive  object,  some  consecrated  relic,  or  the 
tomb  of  some  revered  impostor  ;  things  which 
being  connected,  in  their  apprehension,  as 
closely  with  religion  as  their  garments  are 
with  their  persons,  will  impress  the  assurance 
that  the  religion  of  w^hich  the  emblems  are 


44  THE   GLORY  OF   THE   AGE, 

present,  is  present  itself;  that  is  to  say,  that 
it  is  a  reality,  of  which  every  thing  adorable 
or  fearful  is  at  that  instant  impending  in  men- 
acing authority  over  them.  A  thing  inconsid- 
erable in  itself,  firmly  associated  with  an 
invisible  greater  thing  as  its  sign,  may  have 
the  effect  not  only  of  reminding  of  that  greater, 
but  of  aggravating  the  sense  of  both  its  reality 
and  importance. 

His  next  address  may  be  uttered  in  the 
vicinity  of  a  temple,  which,  if  in  ruins,  seems 
to  tell  but  so  much  the  more  impressively, 
by  that  image  and  sign  of  antiquity,  at  what  a 
remote  and  solemn  distance  of  time  that  was 
the  religion  which  they  feel  to  be  the  re- 
ligion still ;  if  undilapidated  and  continuing 
in  its  sacred  use,  overawes  their  minds  with 
the  mysterious  solemnities  of  its  unviolated 
sanctuary  ;  while  the  sculptured  shapes  and 
actions  of  divinities,  overspreading  the  exterior 
of  the  structure,  have  nothing  in  their  impotent 
and  monstrous  device  and  clumsy  execution 
to  abate  the  reverence  of  Hindoo  devotion 
toward  the  objects  expressed  in  this  visible 
language.     The  missionary,  if  an  acute  ob- 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  45 

server,  might  perceive  how  rays  of  mahgnant 
influence  strike  from  such  objects  upon  the 
facukies  of  his  auditors,  to  be  as  it  were  re- 
flected in  their  looks  of  disbehef  and  disdain 
upon  the  preacher  of  the  new  doctrine.  What 
a  strength  of  guardianship  is  thus  arrayed  in 
the  very  senses  of  the  pagan,  for  the  fables, 
lying  doctrines,  and  iimiioral  principles,  estab- 
lished in  his  faith  ! 

Or  we  may  suppose  the  protester  in  the 
name  of  the  tme  God  to  be  led  to  the  scene  of 
one  of  the  grand  periodical  celebrations  of  the 
extraordinary  rites  of  idolatry.  There,  as  at 
the  temple  of  Juggernaut,  contemplating  the 
effect  of  an  intense  fanaticism,  growing  through 
an  almost  infinite  crowd,  he  may  perceive  that 
each  indi\idual  mind  is  the  more  fitted,  by 
being  heated  in  this  infernal  fiirnace,  to  har- 
den in  a  more  decided  form  and  stamp  of 
idolatry  as  it  cools. 

The  very  riches  of  nature,  the  conforma- 
tions and  productions  of  the  elements,  co-ope- 
rate in  this  mighty  tyranny  over  the  mind  by 
occupancy  of  the  senses.  Divinity,  while  de- 
graded in  human  conception  of  it,  in  being 


46  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

diffused  through  these  objects,  comes,  at  the 
same  time,  with  a  more  immediate  impression 
of  presence,  when  flowers,  trees,  animals, 
rivers,  present  themselves,  not  as  effects  and 
illustrations,  but  often  as  substantial  participants, 
or  at  least  sacred  vehicles,  of  that  sublimest 
existence,  and  the  whole  surrounding  physical 
world  is  one  vast  mythology,  an  onmipresent 
fallacy.  In  praying  that  the  region  may  be 
cleared  of  idol  gods,  the  missionary  might  feel 
the  question  suggested  whether  he  is  not  re- 
peating Elijah's  prayer  for  the  withholding  of 
rain,  w^hich  would  certainly  do  much  toward 
vacating  the  pantheon,  by  the  destmction  of 
the  flowers,  trees,  animals,  and  streams. 

This  great  enemy,  against  which  we  are 
wishing  to  excite  Christian  zeal,  is  "  mighty  " 
in  the  strengtli  of  venerable  antiquity.  Anti- 
quity is,  all  over  the  world,  the  favourite  re- 
source of  that  which  is  without  rational  evi- 
dence; especially  so,  therefore,  of  superstition ; 
and  the  Brahminical  superstition  rises  imperi- 
ally above  all  others  in  assumption  of  dignity 
from  the  past,  which  it  arrogates  as  all  its  own, 
but  emphatically  that  which  appears  the  most 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  47 

solemn  by  remoteness.  Other  dominations 
over  human  opinion  are  under  the  necessity 
of  acknowledging  an  origin,  at  a  particular 
period,  and  in  comparative  insignificance  ;  and 
have  had  to  attain  their  due  honours  by  a 
slowly  enlarging  progress  downward  through 
time.  But  this  proud  imposture,  disowning 
every  thing  hke  an  infancy,  disdaining  all  idea 
of  having  ever  been  less  and  afterwards  greater, 
and  defying  all  computation  of  time,  makes 
the  past,  back  to  an  inconceivable  distance, 
the  peculiar  scene  of  its  magnificence.  And 
it  teaches  its  devotees  to  regard  its  continued 
presence  on  earth  not  as  the  progress  of  a 
cause  advancing  and  brightening  into  greatness 
and  triumph,  but  merely  as  something  of  the 
radiance  reaching  thus  far,  and  with  fainter- 
splendour,  from  that  glory  so  divine  in.  the. 
remote  past.  Its  primeval  manifestatipn  was 
of  such  power  as  to  prolong  the  effect  even  to 
this  late  period,  in  which  the  faithful  worshipr. 
pers  have,  to  look  back  so  far  to  behold  the 
glory  of  that  vision  it  once  condescended  to 
unfold  on  this  world.  The  grand  point  of 
attraction  being  thus  placed  in  a  past  so  stu-. 


48  THE  GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

pendous  as  to  assume  almost  a  character  of 
eternity,  the  contemplations,  the  devotional 
feelings,  and  the  self-complacency,  are  drawn 
away  in  a  retrospective  direction,  and  leave 
behind  in  contemipt  all  modern  inventions  of 
faith  or  institution,  as  the  insignificant  follies 
sprung  from  the  corruption  of  a  heaven- 
abandoned  period  of  time.  The  sentiments 
excited  in  them  by  the  many  signs  of  decay 
in  the  exterior  apparatus  of  their  system,  such 
as  the  ruined  state  of  innumerable  temples, 
will  rather  coincide  with  this  attraction  in 
carrying  the  homage  and  the  pride  to  the 
glory  that  was  once,  than  lead  to  any  suspicion 
of  a  futility  for  w^hich  the  system  deserves  to 
grow  out  of  use.  This  retrospective  magnitude, 
this  absorption  of  all  past  duration  in  their 
religion,  this  reduction  to  insignificance  of 
•whatever  else  has  existed,  (if,  indeed,  all  that 
has  existed  has  not  been  comprehended  in  it,) 
cannot  fail  to  protluce  a  degree  of  elation  in 
the  minds  of  the  Hindoos,  not\^ithstanding 
their  incapability  of  genuine  sublimity  of  con- 
ception and  emotion. 

And  again,  however  slight  their  affections 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  49 

toward  their  contemporary  relatives,  the  idea 
of  an  ancestry  extending  back  through  un- 
numbered generations,  all  having  had  their 
whole  intellectual  and  moral  existence  in- 
volved inseparably  in  their  religion,  and  sur- 
rendering in  succession  their  souls  to  become 
a  kind  of  guardians  or  portions  of  it,  must  add 
a  more  vital  principle  of  attraction  to  the  ma- 
jestic authority  and  sanction  of  such  an  an- 
tiquity. Generations  of  little  account  in  their 
own  times  may  acquire,  when  passed  away 
to  be  contemplated  as  ancestry,  a  certain 
power  over  the  imagination  by  becoming  in- 
vested with  something  of  the  character  of  ano- 
ther world, — a  venerableness  w^hich  combines 
with  and  augments  the  interest  which  they 
hold  in  our  thoughts  as  having  once  belonged 
to  our  mortal  fraternity.  This  combined 
interest  going  wholly  into  the  sentiments  of 
religion,  in  the  pagans  of  whom  we  speak, 
they  will  feel  as  if  a  violation  of  that  would 
be  an  insult  to  each  of  the  innumerable  souls 
of  the  great  religious  family  departed,  all 
worthier  of  respect  than  any  that  are  now 
living  in  the  world  from  which  they  have  van- 
7 


50  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

ished.  This  habitual  reference  to  their  ances- 
tors, with  a  certain  sense  of  responsibihty,  is 
maintained  by  various  notions  and  rites  of 
their  superstition,  expressly  contrived  for  the 
purpose  ;  as  well  as  by  the  pride  which  they 
can  all  feel,  though  they  be  but  little  sensible 
to  the  kind  of  poetical  charm  which  might  be 
felt,  in  thus  standing  connected,  through  iden- 
tity of  religious  character  and  economy,  with 
the  remotest  antiquity. 

Nor  can  the  influence  be  small,  in  the  way 
of  confirmed  sanction  and  cherished  pride,  of 
beholding  that  which  has  been  the  element  of 
the  moral  existence  of  an  almost  infinite  train 
of  predecessors,  attested  still,  as  to  its  most 
material  parts,  by  a  world  of  beings  at  this 
hour  coincidmg  with  the  devotee  in  regarding 
it  as  their  honour,  their  sanctity,  and  their 
supreme  law.  Let  the  Hindoo  direct  his 
attention  or  his  travels  whichever  way  he  w^ill, 
within  the  circuit  of  a  thousand  leagues,  he 
meets  with  a  crowding  succession,  without 
end,  of  hving,  thinking  creatures,  who,  notwith- 
standing many  capricious  diversifications  of 
their  general  faith,  live  but  to  believe  and  act 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  51 

as  he  does  with  regard  to  the  most  revered  of 
its  Impositions.  And  what,  in  effect,  do  they 
all  think  and  act  so  for,  but  as  evidence  that 
he  is  right  ?  The  mind  can  rest  its  assurance 
of  its  own.  rectitude  of  persuasion  on  this  wide 
concurrence  of  belief,  without  therefore  ac- 
knowledging to  itself  a  degrading  dependence. 
Its  mode  of  seeing  the  matter  is,  not  that  the 
faith  of  a  large  assemblage  of  other  minds  is 
its  faith,  but  that  its  faith  is  theirs  ;  not — I 
think  and  act  as  they  do  ;  but,  They  think  and 
act  as  I  do.  This  sort  of  ambitious  expansion 
outward,  from  the  individual  as  a  centre, 
saves  his  pride  of  reason  from  being  humili- 
ated by  the  consideration  of  the  sameness  of 
his  notions  with  those  of  the  great  mass. 
The  sense  of  community  in  human  nature  is 
strongly  and  delightfully  admitted,  when  agree- 
ing multitudes  corroborate  a  man's  opinions 
without  depriving  him  of  the  self-complacency 
of  believing  that  he  holds  them  in  the  strength 
of  his  own  wisdom. 

This  corroborating  influence  of  the  consent 
of  contemporary  multitude  in  the  most  essen- 
tial points  of  the  system,  has,  as  we  have  al- 


52  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

ready  hinted,  its  effect  among  the  Hindoos, 
even  without  the  intervention  of  social  affec- 
tion. Never  did  any  where  a  great  number  of 
human  creatures  exist  together  \^ith  so  Httle 
of  the  attachments  of  kindred  and  friendship. 
It  is  a  striking  ilkistration  of  the  tendency  of 
their  superstition,  that  it  nearly  abohshes 
these  interests,  keeping  the  whole  population 
in  the  state  of  detached  and  most  selfish 
particles.  This  seems  indeed  to  be  foregoing 
one  of  the  strongest  means  of  power,  since  a 
system  of  notions  and  moral  principles  might 
find  the  greatest  account  in  so  combining 
itself  with  the  affections  of  nature  as  to  ens^age 
them  for  auxiliaries.  But  then  what  a  triumph 
of  this  bad  cause,  that  while,  instead  of  en- 
ticing these  charities  into  its  service,  it  tramples 
on  and  destroys  them,  it  can,  notwithstanding, 
make  this  assemblage  of  dissocial  selfish  beings 
act  upon  one  another  in  confirmation  of  their 
common  delusion,  with  an  effect  even  greater 
than  that  which  might  have  arisen  fi'om  friendly 
sympathy.  Of  little  worth  in  one  another's 
esteem  as  relatives  and  fi-iends,  it  is  as  things 
which  the  gods  have  set  their  stamp  upon  tliat 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  53 

they  have  their  grand  value.  The  rehglon  is 
accounted  to  inhabit,  in  so  very  formal  a  mode 
of  existence,  the  persons  of  all  its  subjects, 
that  they  have  the  effect  of  figures  sculptured 
on  their  temples,  or  of  leaves  of  their  sacred 
books  of  mythology.  The  seal  or  brand  of 
the  deities  set  upon  them  does  not  indeed 
dignify  them  all,  but  it  makes  them  all  vouch- 
ers to  the  religion.  They  all  in  conjunction 
personify,  as  it  were,  that  system,  which  as 
much  requires  the  existence  of  Soodras  to 
verify  it  as  of  Brahmins.  The  "  miry  clay  "  of 
the  feet  is  as  essential  a  j)art  as  the  royal 
material  of  the  head. 

Thus  the  vast  multitude  are  made  to  serve 
just  as  surety  to  one  another,  and  all  to  each, 
for  the  verity  of  the  superstition.  And  as  the 
existence  of  any  of  them  on  any  other  account 
had  been  impertinent,  their  existence  in  such 
prodigious  numbers  must  needs  seem  to  de- 
monstrate a  mighty  importance  in  that  for 
evidence  and  exemplification  of  which  it  was 
worth  while  for  them  to  be  so  many. 

With  so  despotic  a  command  over  the  peo- 
ple's  minds,   it   would  have  been  strange  if 


54  THE  GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

this  empire  of  delusion  had  forborne  to  as- 
sume the  advantage  and  security  of  those 
temporalities,  which  no  other  spiritual  tyranny 
was  ever  abstracted  enousrh  to  forget,  and 
which,  indeed,  it  would  have  been  a  foohsh 
impolicy  to  forego.  Indirectly,  it  possesses 
this  mode  of  strength  in  having  for  its  subjects 
the  princely  and  opulent  persons  of  the  com- 
munity. Their  secular  rank  renders  service, 
not  only  by  its  natural  influence  on  the  people 
of  lower  condition,  but  by  the  homage  of  an 
acknowledged  intrinsic  inferiority  of  that  rank 
to  the  highest  of  the  distinctions  founded  in 
religion.  Their  mansions,  gardens,  and  groves, 
are  made  to  testify,  by  all  the  permanent  signs 
of  dedication,  that  their  property  and  state  are 
held  under  the  paramount  rights  of  the  divini- 
ties. But  these  divinities  have  also  their 
direct  revenues,  in  the  shape  of  fixed,  and 
many  of  them  ancient,  appropriations  ;  with 
the  addition  of  an  undefined  right  of  exaction, 
enforced  by  priests  and  consecrated  mendicants 
upon  the  religious  charity  of  the  people. 
This  charity  is  in  one  sense  voluntary  ;  but 
when  it  is  considered  with  what  lofty  preten- 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MISSIONS.  55 

sions  these  applicants  make  their  demands, 
(not  unfrequently  even  assuming  some  mode 
of  identity  with  the  gods  themselves,)  and 
what  benefits  or  curses  are  declared,  and  by 
the  people  believed,  to  depend  infallibly  on 
their  surrendering  or  withholding  the  tribute 
required,  it  is  easy  to  judge  how  much  these 
offerings,  and  their  quantity,  are  left  to  free 
wdll. 

Their  own  rights  and  those  of  their  idols 
might  be  trusted,  for  the  power  of  maintaining 
them,  to  men  whose  demands  of  a  share  of 
the  superstitious  cultivator's  produce  are  to  be 
resisted  at  the  believed  hazard  of  a  blast  on 
the  whole.  As  if,  however,  both  such  endow^- 
ments,  and  such  force  of  requisition,  had  left 
cause  to  fear  that  this  infernal  hierarchy  should 
become  deficient  in  the  substantial  resources 
for  preserving  its  dominion  of  delusion  and 
iniquity,  the  Chiistian  Government  over  India 
has  sought  the  honour  of  being  its  auxiliary  ; 
in  which  capacity  it  is  at  once  accepted  and 
despised  by  the  descendants  of  Brahma.  The 
aid  has  been  afforded  not  simply  in  the  way 
of  securing,  in  observance  of  the  principle  of 


66  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

toleration,  the  pagan  worship  and  means  of 
worship  fi'om  violent  interference,  but  in  the 
forni  of  a  positive  active  patronage.  The 
administration  of  the  funds  for  the  ceremonial 
and  abominations  of  idolatry,  has  been,  to  a 
very  great  extent,  taken  under  the  authority 
and  care  of  the  reigning  power,  composed  of 
persons  zealous  on  this  nearer  side  of  a  certain 
extent  of  water  for  the  established  Christian 
religion,  which  establishment  has  also  been 
extended  to  that  further  side, — with  what 
effect  toward  exploding,  or  even  modifying, 
this  very  marvellous  policy,  or  whether  deemed 
to  be  perfectly  harmonious  with  ir,  we  must 
wait  to  be  informed.^     In  the  mean  time,  the 

*  The  writer  has  been  told,  that  certain  readers  have 
taken  offence  at  something  in  tliis  passage.  He  cannot 
well  understand  why  ;  and  perhaps  those  readers  would 
not  be  much  disposed  to  explain.  The  two  facts  are, 
that  the  government,  that  is,  the  government  of  England, 
have  adopted  a  policy  of  superintending  and  patronizing 
the  idolatrous  establishments  in  India  ;  and  that,  while 
systematically  pursuing  this  policy,  they  have  also  ap- 
pointed and  endowed  a  Christian  Ecclesiastical  Estab- 
lishment there.  Now,  they  do,  or  they  do  not,  consider 
this  measure  of  establishing  a  Christian  national  church 
there  as  compatible,  consistent,  harmonious,  with  that 
policy  of  sanctioning  idolatry.  Do  they,  or  do  they 
not.?     Which  part  of  the  alternative  to  assume,  it  may 

not  be  very  easy  for  candour  to  decide. As  to  the 

fact  of  the  systematic  policy  in  question,  it  has  been 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  57 

religious  public  are  amply  informed  of  a  course 
of  measures  having  been  deliberately  pursued, 
tending  to  support  and  prolong  the  ascendancy 
of  paganism.  It  has  been  disclosed  to  their 
view  that  the  highest  authority  has  taken  upon 
itself  the  regulation  of  the  economy  of  idols' 
temples,  had  restored  endowments  which  had 
been  alienated,  and  has  made  additional  allow- 
ances from  the  public  revenue,  where  the 
existing  appropriations  have  been  judged  in- 
adequate to  preserve  to  those  establishments 
the  requisite  dignity  ; — requisite  for  what,  but 
to  prevent  any  relaxation  of  the  hold  which 
the  imposture  has  on  the  people  ?  And,  be  it 
remembered,  the  revenue  which  is  to  afford 
this  aid  is  constantly  pressing  heavily  for  its 
means  of  competence  on  the  distressed  re- 
sources of  this  Christian  country. 

We    cannot    presume    to   conjecture    how 

formally  stated,  or  incidentally  mentioned,  in  several 
publications  relating  to  India.  But  whoever  may  wish 
to  see  it  exposed  in  its  full  extent  and  evidence,  may 
find  it,  (but  indeed  many  of  our  readers  must  well 
remember  it,)  in  a  long  and  very  able  and  important 
article  in  the  12th  volume  of  the  Christian  Observer, 
(the  numbers  for  October  and  November,  1813.) 
We  do  not  hear  of  any  change  having  taken  place 
in  the  system. 

8 


58  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

much  sooner  this  accessional  means  of  power 
will  begin  to  fail,  than  those  ancient  ones, 
with  which  the  system  w^as  invested  when 
none  of  its  gods  or  sages  could  have  foreseen 
a  reserve  of  assistance  in  such  a  quarter. 
Perhaps  a  confidence, — entertained  upon  the 
assurance  of  that  "lying  spirit"  whose  pro- 
phets were  once  before  trusted  in  by  a  gov- 
ernment,— a  confidence  that  this  pagan  system 
will  be  permanent,  —  contributes  to  prevent 
any  alarm  respecting  the  judicial  notice,  which 
the  Governor  of  the  world  might  take  of  its 
Christian  supporters,  in  the  event  of  his  striking 
it  down. 

agejvct  of  infernal  spirits. 

If  we  add  to  all  these  modes  and  causes  of 
the  mightiness  of  this  superstition,  the  inde- 
fatigable activity  of  the  powers  of  darkness, 
meaning  literally,  infernal  intelligences,  which 
we  beheve  to  be  busy  in  this  world,  it  might  be 
readily  admitted,  we  should  imagine,  that  there 
is  nothing  in  it  worthier  to  have  spmng  from 
the  inspiration,  or  to  be  kept  in  force  by  the 
energy,  of  such  malignity   and  agency.      If 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  59 

there  are  theologians  who  deny  the  interven- 
tion of  such  a  cause  in  this  enormity  of  evil, 
is  it,  perhaps,  that  they  feel  some  need  and 
use  of  its  being  laid  to  the  sole  account  of 
man,  for  supporting  that  other  favourite  opin- 
ion of  theirs,  which  denies  the  radical  cor- 
ruption of  his  nature? — What  new  hopes,  or 
consistencies,  or  facilities,  for  the  prosecution 
of  this  warfare,  might  be  afforded  by  their 
view  of  the  matter,  which  makes  the  human 
nature  to  be  so  excellent,  and  makes  all  this 
to  be  its  spontaneous  product,  it  would  be  of 
no  use  for  us  to  stay  to  inquire  ;  since  it  is  our 
destiny  to  proceed  in  the  contest  under  the 
notion,  that  such  magnitude  of  evil  can  be  no 
less  than  the  leagued  depravity  of  two  bad 
natures.  Those  who  can  ascribe  it  all  to  one, 
and  at  the  same  time  entertain  a  high  venera- 
tion for  that  one,  would  seem  to  make  no  very 
contemptible  approximation,  in  point  of  ration- 
ality, toward  the  idolatry  of  which  we  have 
been  speaking. 

Now,  can  a  system  of  intellectual  and  moral 
perversion,  of  which  the  demoniac  strength 
is  but  slightly  developed  in  this  brief  descrip- 


60  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

tion  of  some  of  its  characteristics,  show  itself 
in  the  view  of  the  adherents  of  the  true  rehg- 
ion,  without  conveying  a  provocation  to  their 
conscience  and  zeal  to  come  forth,  in  aid  of 
any  reasonable  project  for  carrying  a  new 
power  mto  attack  on  what  has,  through  so 
many  ages,  maintained  its  character  of  a  defier 
of  the  living  God,  in  spite  of  all  that  might 
have  been  supposed  to  operate  toward  its 
destruction  from  time,^  and  Nature,  and  the 
vaunted  reason  of  man  ?  Those  who  partake 
of  the  spirit  of  Elijah,  and  are  "very  jealous 
for  the  Lord  of  Hosts,"  will  wish  that  good 
men  might  be  moved  to  conspire  in  an  unani- 
mous hostility,  which  shall  be  carried  into 
effect  through  being  sent  up  as  a  devout 
service  and  appeal  to  Heaven,  to  be  thence 
returned,  (for  it  is  in  this  reflected  power  that 
Christian  zeal  has  its  efficacy,)  to  be  thence 
returned,  as  in  burning  rays,  to  scorch  and 
blast,  here  and  there,  the  extended  array  of 
idolatry,  and  at  length  to  annihilate  it.  But, 
in  thinking  of  such  a  conspiring  zeal,  thus 
reflected  with  an  intensity  not  its  owti,  to 
consume  the  mass  of  abomination,   it   is  for 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  61 

each  one  to  ask  within  himself,  Is  there  not  in 
that  system,  made  up  of  so  many  depravities, 
some  small  part,  some  poisonous  atom,  some 
serpent  vehicle  of  an  evil  principle,  which  I 
may  be,  through  the  same  divine  force  im- 
parted in  its  measure  to  the  humblest  individ- 
ual's effort,  the  means  of  destroying  ?  And 
that  minute  portion  of  active  principle,  wdiich 
noxiously  works  on  in  consequence  of  my  not 
crushmg  it, — may  it  not  be  accounted  to  work 
in  my  name,  making  my  contribution,  real 
however  diminutive,  to  the  deadly  effect  of 
that  system  which  I  might  contiibute  just  so 
much  to  abolish  ?  But  even  though  the  state 
of  the  matter  were,  that  no  actual  effect  at  all 
should  result,  none  discernible  by  Him  who 
discriminates  every  thing  included  in  all  things, 
still,  might  I  not  be  required,  in  mere  proof  of 
my  fidelity  to  him,  to  give  some  demonstration 
of  hatred,  to  fling  some  practical  salutation  of 
war,  against  an  infernal  monster  that,  in  char- 
acter of  a  constellation  of  gods,  arrogates  the 
worship  of  a  large  portion  of  the  human  race, 
and  repays  it  with  perdition  ?  Can  I  hope  to 
go,  without  some  haunting  sense  of  dishonour, 


62  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

to  that  superior  empire  of  the  Almighty,  where 
every  possible  sentiment  of  devotion  is  in 
actual  excitement,  from  a  region  where  I  have 
been  nearly  at  peace  with  such  an  odious 
usurpation  ? 

But  even  this  state  of  peace  with  it  has 
not  been  enough  for  some  of  our  countrymen 
to  maintain :  and  we  think  the  partiality, 
arising  in  some  instances  almost  to  fanaticism, 
which,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  they  have 
manifested  without  reserve  for  this  grossest 
paganism,  may  serve  to  enforce  our  demand 
on  Christian  zeal.  It  may  do  so,  partly,  by  the 
illustration  thus  afforded  of  the  quality  of  the 
design,  since  that  may  be  presumed  to  be 
greatly  excellent  which  has  had  the  exact 
effect  of  irritating  out  by  contrariety  the  worst 
vice  lurking  in  profane  minds  ;  and  it  may 
additionally  do  so  by  the  consideration,  that 
if  a  peculiarly  odious  kind  of  depravity,  of  the 
existence  of  which  there  was  perhaps  no  pre- 
vious suspicion,  suddenly  discloses  itself  in  a 
nation,  there  should  be  an  extraordinary  effort 
to  promote  a  counterbalancing  good.  Such 
an  effort,  besides  that  it  is  due  to  the  honour 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  63 

of  God,  would  seem  to  be  called  for  in  behalf 
of  the  character  of  a  Chiistian  people.  It 
may  also  involve  somewhat  of  that  policy,  in 
reference  to  their  welfare,  which  sober  men 
would  not  easily  pronounce  superstitious  as 
exemplified  in  the  parallel  case  of  a  ship,  in 
which,  if  several  of  the  passengers  were 
expressly  and  ravingly  insulting  Omnipotence, 
any  others,  fearing  the  "  God  of  the  sea  and 
the  dry  land,"  would  consider  an  extraordinary 
degree  of  homage  rendered  to  him  on  their 
part,  in  direct  contravention,  a  matter  not 
altogether  foreign  to  the  safety  of  the  vessel. 
If  their  devotions  had  been,  in  the  first  instance, 
the  cause  of  bringing  out  this  mahgnant  impi- 
ety, they  would  be  certain,  upon  the  exhibition 
of  it,  rather  to  double  than  remit  the  earnest- 
ness and  frequency  of  their  prayers. 

The  promoters  and  immediate  experiment- 
ers of  a  Christian  attempt  on  the  pagans  of 
the  East  naturally  expected,  in  spite  of  the 
pretended  miraculous  mildness  of  the  Hindoo 
character,  to  encounter  a  strenuous  and  per- 
haps malicious  opposition  from  the  idolaters. 
But  it  was  hardly   within   their   calculation^ 


64  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

that  a  very  considerable  number  of  persons  of 
some  note  in  England, — men  enjoying  the 
advantages  of  education  ;  of  weight  in  the 
legislation,  the  mercantile  system,  and  the 
literature,  of  the  country ;  belonging  to  its 
respected  ranks,  classes,  and  professions ;  and 
avowing,  for  the  most  part,  a  veneration  for 
the  religious  establishment; — would  be  pro- 
voked to  join  in  a  violent  outcry  against  a 
scheme  for  imparting  the  gospel  to  the  people 
of  India.  Still  less  was  it  anticipated  of  what 
strain  the  only  music  in  this  clamour  was  to 
be  ;  that  the  vii-ulent  invective  against  the 
"pernicious  fanaticism"  of  missionary  enter* 
prise  would  ever  and  anon  be  heard  modulating 
itself  to  an  expression  of  indulgent  partiality 
toward  the  execrable  superstition  threatened 
by  that  enterprise.  There  had  not  been  in 
this  country  so  free  a  display  of  every  infidel 
propensity  as  to  render  it  a  matter  of  familiar 
observation,  that  men  who  hate  the  intrusion 
of  a  divine  jurisdiction  are  much  inclined  to 
regard  with  favour  a  mode  of  pretended  re- 
ligioUj  which  they  can  make  light  of  as  devoid 
of  all  real  authority.     They  are  so   inclined 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  65 

because,  through  its  generic  quahty,  (of  reli- 
gion,) it  somewhat  assists  them  to  make  hght 
also  of  a  more  formidable  thing  of  that  quality 
and  name.  It  comes,  probably,  with  a  great 
show  of  claims,  —  antiquity,  pretended  mira- 
cles, and  an  immense  number  of  believers :  it 
may  nevertheless  be  disbeheved  with  most 
certain  impunity.  Under  the  encouragement 
of  this  disbelief  with  impunity,  the  mind  ven- 
tures to  look  toward  other  religions,  and  at 
last  toward  the  Christian.  That  also  has  its 
antiquity,  its  recorded  miracles,  and  its  mul- 
titude of  believers.  Though  there  may  not, 
perhaps,  be  impious  assurance  enough  to  as- 
sume formally  the  equality  of  the  pretensions 
in  the  two  cases,  there  is  a  successful  eager- 
ness to  escape  from  the  evidence  that  the 
apparent  similarity  is  superficial,  and  the  real 
difference  infinite  ;  and  the  irreligious  spirit 
springs  rapidly  and  gladly,  in  its  disbelief, 
from  the  one,  as  a  stepping-place  to  the  other. 
But  that  which  affords  such  an  important  con- 
venience for  surmounting  the  awe  of  the  true 
religion,  will  naturally  be  a  great  favourite, 
even  at  the  very  moment  it  is  seen  to  be 
9 


66  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

contemptible,  and  indeed,  in  a  sense,  in  con- 
sequence of  its  being  so.  Complacency  min- 
gles with  the  very  contempt  for  that  from 
which  contempt  may  rebound  on  Christianity. 
These  fierce  advocates  of  paganism  it  were 
in  vain  to  warn  of  a  time,  when  the  summons 
to  them  will  be,  in  effect,  to  "come  forth 
against  the  Lord,"  if  they  dare  then  repeat 
their  well  remembered  words  of  reverence  for 
idolatry  ;*  a  time  when  their  impious  affec- 
tation of  liberal  homage  to  all  "  religions," 
as  proper  and  useful  for  their  respective  parts 
of  the  world,  will  give  place  to  the  insuffera- 
ble conviction  of  having  insultingly  rejected 
that  infinite  good,  which  only  one  had  to  offer ; 
and  when  their  contemptuous  disallowance  of 
any  higher  rule  of  judging  and  proceeding 
with  respect  to  a  people's  religion,  than  the 
consideration  of  how  it  may  affect  govern- 
ment and  commerce,  will  come  to  be   esti- 


*  The  most  furious  of  them,  a  person  under  a  military 
designation,  is  dead  since  this  was  written.  The  most 
jocular,  vulgar,  and  far  enough  from  least  malicious,  of 
the  revilers  of  the  design  for  converting  the  idolaters,  a 
person  with  tlie  ecclesiastical  prefix  to  his  name,  stili 
lives. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  67 

mated  and  pronounced  upon,  in  a  scene  where 
all  worldly  policy  will  be  at  an  end — except- 
ing in  its  retribution  ;  and  where  so  many 
millions  will  be  awaiting  that  consignment, 
whatever  it  may  be,  for  which  they  will  have 
grown  to  a  fitness  as  subjects  of  a  false  and 
depraving  religion.  Then  will  such  men  meet 
their  account  with  the  fabricators  and  imposers 
of  false  religions  to  serve  their  ambition,  with 
apostates,  and  whatever  other  enemies  of  Christ 
will  hear  with  despair  the  sentence,  "  Behold, 
ye  despisers,  and  wonder,  and  perish."  It 
can  be  of  no  use,  we  repeat,  to  admonish  them; 
but  we  may  urge  it  on  the  friends  of  true  relig- 
ion and  the  illumination  of  the  world,  that  to 
this  phenomenon  of  a  zealous  avowal  and  effort 
in  favour  of  paganism,  in  this  Christian  coun- 
try, in  this  stage  of  its  knowledge,  their 
contrary  zeal  and  exertion  should  be  what  the 
living  rod  of  Moses  was  to  the  serpents  of  the 
magicians. 

It  is  at  the  same  time  to  be  acknowledged, 
that  there  is  a  great  abatement  of  the  public 
manifestation  of  this  disposition  to  vindicate 
idolatry,  and  this  animosity  against  all  attempts 


68  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

to  reduce  its  dominion.  However  unallayed 
the  rancorous  sentiment  may  remain,  it  has 
been  found  that  its  unqualified  exposure  is  a 
little  incommodious  on  the  score  of  character. 
Indeed,  in  the  season  of  its  most  virulent 
eruption,  some  of  the  persons  in  whom  it 
raged  thought  it  worth  while,  (others  were 
more  bold  or  honest,)  to  endeavour  to  give  it 
a  disguised  appearance.  It  was  made  to  in- 
spirit some  argument  of  pretended  political 
expediency.  It  was  vented  under  the  form  of 
a  representation,  urged  with  every  seeming  of 
a  most  sincere  and  wrathful  earnestness,  that 
missionary  proceedings,  permitted  but  a  very 
little  w^hile  longer,  would  infallibly  work  the 
destruction  of  the  British  empire  in  Asia  ; 
although  it  is  probable  that  some  of  these 
malignants  laughed  in  private  at  such  as  might 
be  simple  enough  to  let  themselves  become, 
upon  this  representation,  affected  with  this 
panic.  Such  assertions  were  hazarded  in  a 
sanguine  confidence,  for  which  it  is  a  lamenta- 
ble reflection  on  our  country  that  there  should 
have  been  no  slight  grounds,  that  the  matter 
would  not  be  suffered  to  proceed  to  the  trial. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  69 

But  a  power  from  Heaven  interposed,  acting 
partly  by  the  instrumentality  of  the  zeal  of  the 
religious  part  of  the  community  ;  the  Govern- 
ment were  decided  to  prolong  the  impunity  of 
the  reviled  missionaries,  which  authority  in 
their  favour  has  silenced  many  that  were  inca- 
pable of  feeling  any  restraint  from  the  fear  of 
God  ;  and  time  and  experience  have-  brought 
contempt  on  all  their  rant  of  prognostication. 

We  have  alluded  to  such  men  only  .to  gain 
from  them  a  service,  for  which  we  shall  ow^e 
them  no  thanks.  Religion  should  keep  pace 
with  physical  science  in  the  art  of  making 
noxious  things  contribute  to  salutary  operations. 
No  bad  moral  force,  if  it  cannot  be  annihilated, 
should  be  left  free  from  attempts  to  cheat  it 
into  a  contrary  action  to  what  it  naturally  in- 
tends ;  and  we  wish  to  make  the  force  of  evil, 
emitted  from  these  men's  minds,  act  in  coinci- 
dent impulse  with  the  motives  which  should 
carry  the  servants  of  God  into  a  closer  and 
still  more  animated  conflict  with  the  powers  of 
heathen  darkness. 


70  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 


THE    PROGRESS    OF   MISSIONS   ENCOURAGING, 

This  good  cause  has  prevailed  on  the  judge- 
ment, and  obtained  the  practical  aid,  of  the 
religious  public,  to  an  extent  which  we  are 
willing  to  regard  as  an  omen  from  Heaven,  of 
great  effects  to  be  accomplished  in  its  progress. 
But  it  is  not  improbable  there  may  still  remain^ 
among  a  minority  of  good  men,  some  feelings 
not  quite  reconciled  to  schemes  of  such  wide 
scope,  such  interminable  demands  of  assistance, 
and  such  a  distant  field  of  execution  ;  schemes^ 
too,  which  cannot  be  named  but  as  amidst  the 
echo  of  ten  thousand  voices,  of  men  in  repute 
for  sense,  hardly  yet  ceasing  to  pronounce 
them  chimerical  and  fanatical ;  schemes  but 
partially  emerging  from  that  general  ridicule 
which  leaves,  though  abated,  such  marks  upon 
an  object,  that  most  men  are  long  ashamed  to 
entertain  it. 

There  is  much  difference  of  mental  consti- 
tution for  receiving  the  impression  of  such 
projects.  There  is  a  class  of  good  men  natu- 
rally formed  to  be  exceedingly  sober,  and 
cautious,  and  deliberate^  and  anxious  for  all 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  71 

things  to  be  kept  in  right  proportions  and 
maragaable  compass  !  Excellent  qualities  ; 
adapted  specifically  to  some  departments  of 
duty,  and  of  great  use  in  a  certain  measure  of 
interference  in  all.  But  let  it  be  suggested  to 
their  possessors,  that  there  is  perhaps  no  class 
of  men  so  apt  to  overvalue  their  peculiar 
endowments,  in  contradistinction  to  those  of  a 
different  order  ;  and  no  class  more  needing  to 
be  warned  of  the  faults  akin  to  their  virtues, 
and  into  which  those  virtues  are  liable  to  be 
insensibly  transmuted.  Nor,  while  they  are 
in  an  especial  manner  ready  if)  take  credit  to 
themselves  for  independence  of  judgment,  are 
there  any  good  men  whose  feelings  and  opin- 
ions are  more  at  the  mercy  of  those  from  whom 
they  differ,  no  class  being  liable  to  be  driven 
fiirthur  on  one  side  the  middle  line,  in  a  con- 
cern of  duty,  by  what  appeai-s  to  them  an 
extreme  on  the  other.  And  in  their  own 
extreme,  when  they  have  once  tsiken  their 
position  there,  they  will  maintain  themselves 
with  all  that  stiffness  of  temper,  which,  to  de- 
serve the  name  of  firmness  or  independence^ 
ought  to  have  kept  them  out  of  it. 


72  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

It  may  be  conceded  to  these  worthy  men, 
that  the  advocates  of  missions  have  not  ahvays 
avoided  extravagance.  Especially  when  under 
the  influence  of  a  large  assembly,  supposed  to 
be  animated  by  interests  which  extend  to  the 
happiness  of  a  world,  they  may  have  been 
excited  to  use  a  language  which  seemed  to 
magnify  these  interests,  and  the  projects  in 
which  they  were  embodied,  at  the  expense  of 
all  other  duties  and  concerns  ;  insomuch  that 
some  of  those  extra  prudent  friends  of  ours,  in 
the  auditory,  have  been  wondering  what,  at 
that  rate  of  dev(ftement  of  time,  exertion,  and 
money,  we  are  to  do,  not  only  with  the  other 
claims  of  religious  duty,  but  with  the  whole 
ordinary  economy  of  life,  pressing  upon  us  as 
it  does  with  so  many  peremptory  demands. 
But  allowance  must  be  made  for  a  little  excess 
in  the  pleader  of  such  a  cause.  Its  great  im- 
portance, of  which  he  is  at  all  times  soberly 
certain,  expands  into  a  kind  of  dazzling  mag- 
nificence before  him  when  a  multitude  of 
minds  seem  to  be  contemplating  it  in  sympathy 
with  him.  It  appears  to  him  as  bright  with  a 
reflection  of  all  the  complacent  regards  which 


OR  TPIE   SriEIT   OF   MLSSIOXS.  73 

those  minds  are  fixing  upon  it.  Under  such 
a  temporary  animating  influence,  all  the  topics 
and  arguments  which  he  has  previously  accu- 
mulated in  favour  of  the  selected  subject, 
become  as  it  were  dilated  and  on  fire,  without 
any  intentional  exaggeration :  and  unless  he 
had  a  capacity,  like  Bacon,  of  keeping  all 
subjects  within  his  view  almost  at  once,  in 
their  relative  proportions  as  in  a  map,  he  will 
naturally  represent  the  claims  of  the  selected 
one  in  terms  partaking  a  little  too  much  of 
ambition  and  monopoly.  We  cannot  wonder 
that  our  calculating  friends  should  be  making, 
in  their  minds,  a  strong  protest  against  this 
excess  ;  but  they  are  aware  how  little  they 
need  entertain  any  apprehension  for  its  con- 
sequences ;  as  well  knowing  that  the  persons 
addressed  are  never  betrayed  into  such  enthu- 
siasm, as  to  forget  to  take  the  practical  stand-' 
ard  of  their  duty  at  a  sufficient  reduction  of 
the  requirement  made  or  implied  in  the  hyper- 
bolical language  of  the  advocate. 

While,  however,  some  concession  is   thus 
made  to  the  cautious  good  men,  who  are  more 
afraid  of  extravagance  than  of  all  other  errors 
10 


74  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

in  designs  for  promoting  religion,  they  must 
be  told,  that  it  would  have  been  an  ill  fate  for 
Christianity  in  the  world,  if  Christians  of  their 
temperament  could  always  have  held  the  as- 
cendency in  projecting  its  operations.  If  they 
would  for  a  moment  put  themselves,  in  imagi- 
nation, in  the  case  of  being  contemporary 
with  Wicliff,  or  with  Luther,  and  of  l^eing  ap- 
plied to  by  one  of  these  daring  spirits  for  ad- 
vice, we  may  ask  what  counsel  they  can  sup- 
pose themselves  to  have  given.  They  cannot 
but  be  instantly  conscious  that,  though  they 
had  been  Protestants  at  heart,  their  disposition 
would  have  been  to  array  and  magnify  the 
objections  and  dangers  ;  to  dwell  in  emphatic 
terms  on  the  inveterate,  all-comprehensive, 
and  resistless  dominion  of  the  papal  church, 
established  in  every  soul  and  body  of  the 
people  ;  on  the  vigilance  and  prompt  malignity 
of  the  priests ;  and  on  the  insignificance,  as  to 
any  probable  effect,  of  an  obscure  individual's 
efforts  against  an  immense  and  marvellously 
well  organized  system  of  imposture  and  iniqui- 
ty,— even  were  it  not  the  extreme  of  folly 
not  to  foresee  that  his  protestation  would  soon 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  75 

bring  hiiii  to  encounter  the  ultima  ratio  of  his 
provoked  enemy,  in  the  form  of  tribunals, 
dungeons,  and  death.  In  short,  if  in  those 
instances  such  counsel  had  been  acted  upon 
as  they  would  have  given,  that  zeal  which  was 
kindling  and  destined  to  lay  a  great  part  of  the 
mightier  Babylon  in  ashes,  would  have  smoul- 
dered and  expired  in  a  languid,  hstless  hope, 
that  the  Almighty  w^ouid  sometime  create  such 
a  juncture  of  circumstances  as  should  admit  an 
attempt  at  reformation  without  a  culpable  and 
useless  temerity.  And  so  we  might,  [but]  for 
WiclifF  and  Luther,  have  been  worshipping 
waxen  toys,  and  trusting  our  most  momentous 
interests  on  the  strength  of  penances,  absolu- 
tions, and  ceremonial  antics,  at  this  very  day. 
And  to  descend  to  the  undertaking  now 
under  consideration  ;  —  all  that  has  been  ac- 
complished by  it  in  India,  and  is  now  accom- 
plishing, as  introductory,  we  trust,  to  a  religious 
change  not  less  glorious  or  extensive  than  the 
Reformation,  may  be  regarded  by  its  active 
fi-iends  as,  in  some  sense,  a  reward  for  having 
refused  to  be  controlled  by  the  dissuasive 
arguments,    and    desponding    predictions,    of 


76  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

many    very   worthy    deprecators   of  rashness 
and  enthusiasm. 

It  is  from  such  a  quarter  that  we  may  hear 
disapprobation  conveyed  in  the  question.  What 
can  we  do  against  an  evil  of  such  enormous 
magnitude,  and  so  consolidated  ?  It  may  be 
answered,  (as  it  has  been  already  suggested,) 
What  you  can  do,  if  the  expression  means 
what  precise  quantity  of  effect  a  severe  calcu- 
lation may  promise  from  a  given  effort,  is  not 
always  to  be  the  rule  of  conduct ;  for  this 
would  be  to  deny  the  absolute  authority  of  the 
Divine  Master.  We  refuse  to  obey  him  for 
his  own  sake,  if  we  assume  to  place  the  gov- 
erning reason  for  all  the  services  we  are  to 
render  in  a  judgment  which  we  think  we  can 
ourselves  fomi,  whether  they  will  accomplish 
an  end  worth  the  labour,  and  therefore  to  fix 
their  limit  at  the  point  beyond  which  ^ve  cannot 
with  confidence  extend  our  calculations.  Such 
an  arrogant  impiety  carried  to  its  full  length, 
would  at  last  demand  of  him  that  he  should 
require  no  service,  without  placing  clearly 
within  our  view  all  those  consequences  of 
it  on  which  his  own  just  reasons  for  exacting 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  77 

it  are  founded.  That  is,  it  would  become  a 
demand  to  be  exempted  from  all  services 
whatever. 

It  is  the  very  contrary  spirit  to  this  of  re- 
strictive parsimonious  calculation  that  has  been 
the  most  signally  honoured  ;  inasmuch  as  some 
of  the  most  effectual  and  of  the  noblest  services 
rendered  to  God  in  all  time,  have  begun  much 
more  in  the  prompting  of  zeal  to  attempt 
something  for  him  as  it  were  at  all  hazards, 
than  in  rigorous  estimates  of  the  probable 
measure  of  effect. 

Let  it  be  observed  also,  how  ail  history 
abounds  with  great  ultimate  consequences 
from  little  causes ;  in  which  fact  it  only  de- 
clares and  exemplifies  a  prevailing  law  in  the 
constitution  of  the  world  ;  a  law  by  which  the 
diminutive  grows  to  the  large,  sparks  flame 
into  conflagrations,  fountains  originate  mighty 
streams,  and  most  inconsiderable  moral  agents 
and  actions  are  made  the  incipient  points 
whence  trains  of  agencies  and  effects,  proceed- 
ing on  with  continual  accession,  enlarge  into 
effects  of  immense  magnitude.  Some  of  these 
great   results,   now    forming   most   important 


78  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

cii'cumstances  and  modifications  in  the  state  of 
tlie  human  race,  bear  on  them  a  pecuharity  of 
cliaracter,  whicli  will  hardly  allow  us  to  look 
at  them  without  a  reference  in  thought  to  the 
points  whence  the  progression  began.  They 
appear,  notwithstanding  their  extension,  with 
a  certain  prominence  and  distinctness  by  which 
we  are  reminded  of  their  history  ;  while  others 
ai-e  become  so  diffused  and  blended  into  the 
general  conformation  of  things,  that  their  own 
distingujslial)le  colour,  so  to  speak,  does  not 
remain  obvious  enough  to  excite  readily  or 
necessarily  any  thought  of  them  as  effects 
^vllich  may  be  retrospectively  traced  to  precise 
points,  where  their  causes  first  sprung  into 
action.  Much  of  the  actual  condition  of  our 
part  of  the  world  consists  of  a  number  of  these 
grand  results  of  enlarging  trains  of  effects, 
progressive  from  the  smallest  beginnings  at 
various  distances  back  in  the  past.  And  were 
not  these  now  wide-spread  results  so  combined 
into  one  order  of  things  and  familiarized  around 
us,  and  were  not,  besides,  the  history  of  them 
so  deficient  and  confused,  it  might  very  often 
be  a  pleasing  employment,  for  both  the  philo- 


OR   THE  SPIRIT   OP'   MISSIONS.  79 

Sophie  and  the  devout  mind,  to  trace  them 
backward  to  the  diminiitiveness  in  whicli  tliey 
began.  A  mysterious  hand  threw  a  particle 
of  a  cause,  if  we  may  express  it  so,  among  the 
elements  ;  it  had  the  principle  of  attraction  in 
it  ;  it  found  something  akin  to  it  to  combine 
with,  obtaining  so  an  augmentation,  to  be 
instantly  again  augmented,  of  the  attracting 
and  assimilating  power,  which  grew  in  a  ratio 
that  became  at  length  stupendous  ;  and  it 
exhibits  the  final  result,  (if  ^ny  result  yet 
attained  could  be  called  final,)  in  something, 
perhaps,  which  now  forms  the  most  important 
distinction  and  advantage  of  a  nation,  or  of  a 
still  larger  section  of  the  world.  What  was 
the  commencement  of  the  true  religion  in  this 
land,  and  of  those  several  reformations  which 
have  partly  restored  it  from  its  corruptions  ? 
And  what  would  be  the  term  of  proportion, 
according  to  our  principles  .of  judging,  between 
the  object  as  seen  in  the  diminutiveness  of  the 
incipient  cause,  and  in  its  present  extent  of 
prevalence? — between,  (if  we  may  be  allowed 
the  figure,)  the  germ  in  the  acorn  and  the 
majestic  oak  ? 


80  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

A  result  thus  growing  to  an  immense  mag- 
nitude from  an  original  cause  apparently  so 
insignificant,  is  the  collective  consequence  of  a 
great  number  of  causes  progressively  starting 
and  multiplying  into  consentaneous  operation, 
each  of  them  having  in  the  same  manner  its 
appropriate  enlarging  series  of  consequences, 
still  uniting  with  the  one  great  process.  And 
in  looking  to  the  future  progress  of  an  under- 
taking for  diffusing  Christianity  in  India,  is  it 
not  perfectly  rational  to  presume,  that  many 
small  means  and  little  events  will  be,  in  their 
respective  times  and  places,  the  commence- 
ments, and  m  a  sense  the  causes,  of  trains  of 
consequences  interminably  advancing  and  en- 
larging ? 

For  example,  we  may  imagine  the  destiny 
of  some  particular  copy  of  the  Bible  or  New 
Testament,  in  one  of  the  native  languages  ; 
and  a  strange  interest  w^ould  attach  to  such  a 
volume,  could  there  be  any  sign  to  indicate 
this  destiny,  at  the  moment  of  its  issuing  from 
the  repository.  It  may  be  supposed  to  come 
into  the  hands,  in  a  way  much  like  casualty, 
of  a  heathen  somewhat  more  thoughtful  than 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIOXS.  81 

his  companions.  Disgust  or  indignation  at  the 
first  aspect  of  what  he  finds  there  may  prompt 
him  to  throw  away  the  book,  which  he  may 
perceive  to  be  vhtually  an  impeachment  of  his 
rehgion,  his  gods,  his  priests,  and  liimself. 
But  a  certain  disquiet,  of  curiosity  mingled 
with  a  deeper  sentiment,  shah  have  seized 
him,  and  shall  impel  him  irresistibly  to  that 
book  again :  he  shall  feel  as  if  the  eye  of  a 
spectre  had  glanced  upon  him,  and  stricken 
him  with  a  fascination  that  compels  him  to 
follow  whether  he  will  or  not.  A  rising  sus- 
picion that  all  within  him,  and  around  him, 
may  have  been  A^Tong,  shall  be  aggravated,  by 
repeated  perusal,  to  full  conviction  ;  while  the 
dawn  of  the  true  light  and  of  a  happier  state 
is  breaking  on  the  night  of  his  soul.  Commu- 
nications and  discussions  with  his  relatives  and 
neighbours  may  accoinpany  the  latter  part  of 
this  process ;  and  his  finally  complete  persua- 
sion will  be  followed  by  zealous  exertions  to 
impart  what  he  will  deem  the  greatest  good 
on  earth.  The  vast  majority  will  obdurately 
resist ;  but  within  a  year  he  shall  find  one  or 
two,  and  in  the  next  several  more,  surrendering 
11 


§2  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

to  the  same  convictions,  and  then,  as  it  were 
instinctively,  unfolding  their  new  faith  as  a  net 
for  proselytes.  Who  shall  presume  to  say 
what  the  consequence  may  not  be  in  fifty  or 
in  thirty  years  ?  Which  of  our  Christian 
deriders  of  the  madness  of  missionary  hopes, 
would  venture  to  pledge  his  fortune  for  the 
inviolateness,  half  a  century  hence,  of  those 
shrines  and  idols,  at  present  frequented  and 
adored  in  the  district  where  such  a  man  is 
perhaps  at  this  hour  beginning,  by  the  intrusion 
of  the  supposed  Bible,  to  be  disturbed  in  his 
"unchangeable"  notions  and  rites,  as  these 
Christians  have  so  often  pronounced  them? 

We  may  without  extravagance  suppose 
these  events  to  happen  in  a  great  number  of 
instances,  here  and  there  in  that  realm  of 
darkness  ;  and  we  might  add  many  other 
diminutive  incidents  and  agents.  The  possible 
effects  of  a  few  tracts,  conveyed  in  a  manner 
appearing  at  first  unaccountable,  to  a  great 
distance  from  the  place  w^here  they  may  have 
been  put  into  pagan  hands,  by  good  men 
little  apprised  of  the  dignified  appointment 
with  which  those  humble  gifts  left  their  own, 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  83 

Ims  been  delightfully  exemplified  in  some  of 
tlie  rather  recent  accounts  of  this  mission. 
Among  tlie  little  causes  thus  presented  to  the 
imagination  as  destined  to  produce  great  effects, 
will  appear  some  images  of  the  infantine  coun- 
tenances of  the  pupils  now  taught,  and  here- 
after to  be  taught,  in  those  numerous  schools 
brought  into  existence  by  the  mission,  not 
indeed  contrived  for  proselytizing,  as  the  im- 
mediate purpose,  but  certain  to  contribute  to  it 
indirectly  in  the  course  of  years. 

You  are  glad  to  admit  how  reasonable,  how 
sober  it  is,  to  expect  that  many  such  appa- 
rently inconsiderable  things  will  thus  grow  to 
magnitude  in  the  progress  of  their  effects  con- 
tiibutary  to  the  success  of  the  good  cause. 
But  it  will  occur  to  you  that,  in  imagining 
these  diminutive  causes,  we  have  not  begun 
quite  at  their  beginning.  It  is  a  pleasing  thing 
to  see,  in  the  hands  of  the  supposed  pagan, 
the  book  or  tract  which  may  thus  explode  his  su- 
perstition, and  perhaps  be  the  cause  of  ultimately 
setting  his  temple  and  idols  on  fire  ;  but  how 
is  that  formidable  substance  to  come,  gratui- 
tously,   into   his  hands  ?     Think  what   must 


84  THE  GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

have  preceded.  Think  of  the  complicated 
process  of  its  preparation,  involving  so  many 
kinds  of  workmanship.  And  this  brings  the 
train  of  the  operation  up  to  its  originating 
matter  in  your  own  hands,  a  commencement 
so  long  antecedent  to  the  pagan's  receiving 
the  supposed  book,  the  event  from  which  we 
have  dated  such  pleasing  consequences,  but 
on  which  consequences  w^e  are  not  to  be  in- 
dulging our  anticipative  gratulations  as  if  the 
book  were  to  fall  from  the  sky.  The  little 
cause,  then,  which  we  may  follow  onward  in 
thought  to  such  noble  effects,  —  see  it  deriving 
itself  from  a  still  less, — a  piece  of  money; 
which  may  have  carried  its  image  and  super- 
scription, in  the  insignificance  of  ordinary 
service,  through  a  thousand  hands,  at  each 
movement  very  harmless  to  the  cause  of  evil, 
till  it  has  come  into  that  hand  wliich  has  de- 
voted it  to  produce  a  Bible,  which  may  have 
the  effect  at  length  of  a  thunderbolt  on  an 
idol's  temple.  Here  is  a  direct  answer  to. the 
question,  perhaps  querulously  asked,  What 
can  we  do  ? 

Should  it  be  said,  that  such  fanciful  fictions, 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  85 

even  supposing  a  certainty  that  they  will  be 
realized,  bring  no  lively  incitement,  because, 
the  contributions  being  thrown  into  a  collec- 
tive sum  of  means,  no  one's  quota  can  have 
any  distinct  operation,  no  individual  can  please 
himself  with  the  idea  that  his  particular  contii- 
bution  may  be  made  the  point  of  origination 
of  one  of  these  happy  trains, — we  would  ask, 
whether  it  may  not  be  honour  enough  for  the 
individual  to  have  his  share  in  orio;inatini>; 
wiiatever  such  trains  of  progressive  good  shall 
take  their  rise  from  the  collective  contributions 
of «//.  While  this  union  of  the  means  so  con- 
tributed makes  those  who  supply  them  sharers 
of  the  loss  in  all  those  Bibles,  those  little 
books,  and  those  cases  of  the  tuition  given  to 
juvenile  heathens,  which  shall  fail  of  producing 
any  good,  it  makes  them  participators  also  in 
all  those  happy  and  noble  consequences,  of 
which  it  may  be  assumed  as  quite  certain  that 
here  and  there  one  of  the  Bibles,  one  of  the 
tracts,  one  of  the  mstructed  heathen  children, 
will  be  the  cause. 

This  confident  belief,  that  in  the  prosecution 
of  the  enterprise  now  under  consideration,  there 


86  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

cannot  fail  to  be  some  striking  instances  of 
particular  and  apparently  inconsiderable  means 
thus  rendered  productive  of  distinguished 
effects,  and  those  effects  producing  new  and 
greater  ones,  in  a  continued  succession  enlarg- 
ing as  it  advances, — this  confidence  is  author- 
ized, (Independently  of  all  other  reasons,)  by 
the  fact,  that  such  instances  have  occurred  in 
every  recorded  scheme  of  Christian  enterprise 
which  has  been  prosecuted  on  a  wide  scale, 
from  right  motives,  and  with  indefatigable 
perseverance.  Not  that  in  all  of  them  there 
have  been  such  magnificent  and  prodigious 
ultimate  effects  from  little  causes  as  we 
have  been  describing ;  not  that  in  every 
province  of  benevolent  activity  a  rill  from 
some  little  obscure  source  has  swelled  into  a 
Nile,  and  fertilized  a  whole  region ;  but  in 
all  of  them  it  may  be  safely  asserted,  that 
there  have  been  instances,  of  a  magnitude  to 
throw  contempt  on  frigid,  indolent,  and  irre- 
Mous  calculation. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  87 


FATALISM   MUST    BE    ABANDONED. 

It  is  not  improbable  the  chief  strength  of 
whatever  rekictance  may  still  remain,  among 
the  friends  of  Christianity,  to  yield  their  flrli 
co-operation  in  projects  for  sending  that  reli- 
gion to  supplant  the  delusion  and>  idolatry  of 
the  Heathen  world,  consists  in  a  kind  of  Re- 
ligious Fatalism,  which  would  make  the  ob- 
jection in  some  such  terms  as  these ;  —  If  that 
Being  whose  power  is  almighty  has  willed  to 
permit  on  earth  the  protracted  existence  in 
opposition  to  him  of  this  enormous  evil,  why 
are  ive  called  upon  to  vex  and  exhaust  our- 
selves in  a  petty  warfare  against  it? — why 
any  more  than  to  attempt  the  extinction 
of  a  volcano  ?  If  it  were  his  will  that  it 
should  be  overthrown,  we  should  soon,  with- 
out having  quitted  our  places  and  our  quiet, 
in  any  offensive  movement  toward  it,  feel  the 
earthquake  of  its  mighty  catastrophe  ;  and 
if  such  is  7iot  his  will,  then  we  should  plainly 
be  putting  ourselves  in  the  predicament  of 
willing  something   which   he   does   not   will, 


88  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

and  making  exertions  which  must  infallibly 
prove  abortive. 

We  may  question  such  an  objector  as  to  the 
real  length  to  which  his  opinion  or  feeling  goes. 
May  it  approach  to  a  sentiment  like  this, — 
that,  the  thing  contemplated  being  permitted 
by  Him  that  is  infinitely  good  and  powerful,  it 
is  therefore  not  of  a  nature  hostile  to  him,  not 
of  a  tendency  directly  the  reverse  of  that  of 
his  attributes,  not  of  deadly  malignity  to  his 
creatures  ;  that,  in  short,  the  brand  of  divine 
reprobation  stamped  by  both  revelation  and 
reason  upon  idolatry,  and  on  each  of  its  deceits 
and  depravities  severally,  is  itself,  in  truth, 
but  a  deceit  of  another  kind,  a  mere  ac- 
commodation to  a  certain  superficial  and 
conventional  theory  ;  the  real  fact  being,  after 
all,  that  God  is  at  peace  with  the  "thing  thus 
reprobated  ? 

We  may  presume  he  will  instantly  reply  in 
the  negative,  and  say,  that  he  holds  this  mass 
of  error  and  turpitude  to  be  intrinsically  and 
immutably  opposite  to  the  divine  goodness  and 
holiness,  and  pernicious  to  man,  —  any  other 
judgment  of  the  matter  being,  according  to  all 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  89 

fact  and  all  Scripture,  utterly  and  implously 
absurd  ;  and  that  therefore  the  divine  permis- 
sion of  this  great  evil  appears  at  every  step  of 
thought  but  the  more  mysterious. 

Well,  then,  we  immediately  say  to  him, 
there  are  two  views,  according  to  one  of  which 
yoQ  are  to  form  your  scheme  of  conduct ;  on 
the  one  hand,  a  mystery  in  the  divine  govern- 
ment, a  permission  infinitely  inexplicable  to 
you;  and  on  the  other,  the  most  glaring 
manifestation  of  the  quality  of  the  thing  so 
permitted,  as  hateful  in  itself  and  in  the  sight 
of  God.  Consider  from  which  of  these  two  it 
is  the  most  rational  for  you  to  take  your  rule 
of  action,  —  from  that  where  your  understanding 
is  utterly  lost,  or  from  that  where  all  is  de- 
monstration or  self-evidence.  You  have  light 
given  you  on  the  nether  tract  where  you  are 
placed,  beneath  the  awful  mystery  in  the 
heaven  above,  which  interposes  darkness  be- 
tween you  and  the  reasons  and  counsels  of  the 
Almighty.  By  this  light  you  have  an  infallible 
manifestation  of  the  infinitely  odious  nature  of 
an  object  that  stands  before  you.  What  can 
this  light  and  this  manifestation  be  for,  but 
12 


90  THE   GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

that  you  might  not  have  need  to  look  up  into 
the  darkness  for  an  authority,  from  reasons 
unknown,  to  determine  your  sentiments  and 
action  ?  And  is  it  rational,  and  can  it  be  safe, 
that  the  clear  evidence  which  has  thus  been 
given,  in  order  to  define  for  you  a  scheme  of 
duty  with  the  advantage  of  being  independent 
of  the  mystery,  should  be  rejected  that  you 
may  revert  to  that  very  mystery  for  a  deter- 
mination of  your  duty, — or  rather  for  an  au- 
thority to  conclude  that  you  have  none  ?  Or 
would  you,  both  despising  this  light  and  defying 
that  darkness,  aspire  to  surmount  the  region  of 
mystery  itself,  ascend  into  the  hght  around 
the  throne  of  Heaven,  and,  sharer  of  Sovereign 
Intelligence,  enter  into  God's  own  reasons  for 
permitting  the  evil  ?  Foi*  this  indeed,  even 
this  exaltation  of  intellect,  must  be  attained, 
to  authorize  it  as  a  principle  of  action  that  you 
will  permit  a  great  moral  evil  because  God 
does  so.  For  you  to  maintain  a  calm  tolerance 
toward  it  because  he  does  not  destroy  it, 
is  no  less  than  to  yield  it  an  amicable  acqui- 
escence, no  less  therefore  than  an  alliance 
with  his  enemy,  unless  this  tolerance  is  main- 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIOXS.  91 

tallied  for  precisely  those  reasons,  clearly 
understood,  which  are  his  reasons  for  per- 
mitting it. 

But  perhaps  you  will  say,  that,  far  from  any 
tendency  to  such  an  alliance,  you  are,  as  an 
indispensahle  ])art  and  ])roof  of  your  fidelity 
to  God,  a  mortal  foe  of  this  foe  to  him,  in 
every  estimate  of  your  judgment  and  every 
sentiment  of  your  heart ;  and  that  the  only 
exemption  sought,  upon  the  plea  of  the  divine 
permission  of  the  evil,  is,  that  you  may  be 
excused,  at  least  for  the  present,  from  active 
measures,  and  not  he  summoned  to  expend 
and  waste  your  feeble  strength  on  that  which 
the  Almiglity  strength  spares. 

Now  in  the  first  place,  there  seems  to  1)0-  a 
groundless  assumption  im})lied  here,  namely, 
the  continuance  of  this  permission  indefinitely 
into  futurity  ;  whereas,  for  any  thing  that  can 
be  known  to  you,  hostile  means  put  in  action 
at  this  period  may  coincide  with  a  divine  de- 
cree to  terminate  that  mysterious  sufferance  : 
and  then,  whatever  were  the  natural  inade- 
quacy of  those  means,  they  would  seem  to 
haye  caught  the  fire  of  Gideon's  lamps,  and 


92  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

be  made  to  flame  out  with  supernatural  power 
of  rout  and  confusion  to  the  host  of  pagan 
gods. 

But  in  the  next  place,  you  cannot  consist- 
ently acknowledge  that  the  circumstance  of 
the  divine  permission  of  this  dreadful  system 
of  delusion  affords  no  particle  of  ground  for 
conciliation  to  it,  but  leaves  you  under  the  full 
obligation  of  a  mortal  enmity, — and  at  the 
same  time  claim  from  that  circumstance  an 
exemption  from  practical  efforts  against  it. 
What  indeed  is  its  pemiission  but  simply  its 
existence? — in  virtue  of  which  there  can  be 
no  exemption  from  the  duty  of  attacking  it, 
which  would  not  be  equally  an  exemption 
from  all  duty  whatever  in  the  form  of  oppo- 
sition and  conflict,  which  would  not  confer 
an  universal  inviolability  on  evil,  and  end 
practically  in  the  maxim,  that  the  more  evil 
there  is  in  the  world,  the  less  there  is  for  the 
servants  of  God  to  do.  And  yet,  you  are  say- 
ing, their  feeling,  in  this  state  of  exemption, 
should  be  the  same  as  if  they  had  a  great 
deal  to  do,  and  a  mighty  host  to  fight.  .  With 
respect  at  least  to  the  giant  evil  at  present  in 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  93 

view,  they  may  remain  in  inaction,  and  yet, 
you  admit,  ought  to  glow  with  the  actuating 
principle.  But  then  of  what  use  is  that  prin- 
ciple except  to  disturb  their  repose  ?  That 
they  should  be  inflamed,  as  you  acknowledge 
they  ought,  against  what  is  working  infinite 
mischief  and  misery  to  a  large  portion  of  the 
human  race,  and  yet  should  in  point  of  action 
remain  at  peace  with  it,  would  not  only  be  an 
inconsistency  and  absurdity,  but  would  also, 
if  a  possible  case,  be  an  uneasy  and  mortifying 
one.  Vain  passion  of  Christian  zeal  !  illusory 
and  almost  penal  fire  from  heaven  !  animating 
the  heart  but  to  consume  it,  if  there  should  be 
no  practical  mode  and  machinery  for  conveying 
outward  its  energy  to  strike  against  the  hated 
object.  To  have  the  mind  beset  and  filled,  as 
by  main  force,  with  the  revolting  images  of 
pagan  abominations,  and  to  know  that  this 
infernal  usurpation  triumphs  in  the  slavery  of 
millions  of  our  common  family,  and  yet,  the 
while,  to  submit  to  be  unfurnished  with  expe- 
dients of  devout  revenge  ;  to  have  no  an'ows, 
no  power  of  throwing  reflected  convergent 
sun-beams,  no  missiles  charged  with  the  ele- 


94  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

ments  most  noxious  to  a  malignant  nature  ; 
would  be  felt  as  a  hard  imposition  by  a  man 
of  zeal,  who  would  dread  to  have  his  soul,  in 
reference  to  the  service  of  God,  in  the  condi- 
tion of  a  hero  in  chains.  What  shall  we  think, 
then,  of  a  servant  of  God  desiring  as  an 
exemption  and  a  jrrivilege  to  be  allowed  thus 
to  expend  away  the  vital  force  of  his  spirit 
without  action  ?  We  cannot  beheve  that  he 
has  any  of  that  zealous  emotion,  which  he 
pretends.  No,  you  must  not  profess  to  feel 
and  fulfil  a  duty  of  enmity  in  spirit  against  the 
permitted  evil,  and  at  the  same  time  acknowl- 
edge no  duty  of  offensive  exertion.  The  true 
animosity  would  be  so  intent  on  some  means 
of  action,  that  it  is  quite  certain  the  state  of 
feeling  which  persuades  to  decline  such  means 
is  far  too  pacific  toward  what  is  insulting  God 
and  destroying  man. 

But  it  is  still  more  plainly  to  our  purpose, 
as  against  this  religious  fatalism,  to  allege  the 
matter  of  fact,  that  though  it  has  been  the 
mysterious  will  of  the  Supreme  Governor  to 
permit  such  great  evils  in  the  earth,  it  has  as 
evidently  been  his  \Aill  to  maintain  a  continual 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  95 

war  against  them.  Why  have  there  been  any- 
vindictive  interpositions  of  his  among  the  in- 
habitants of  the  world  ?  Let  the  memorials 
of  cities,  and  tribes,  and  nations,  and  in  one 
instance  a  world,  destroyed,  testify  whether 
he  has  set  men  the  example  of  peace  with 
irreligion  and  iniquity.  What  is  the  inscrip- 
tion on  the  monuments  of  beings  that  his 
vengeance  has  smitten  ?  What  has  been  the 
interpretation  required  to  be  put  on  all  the 
formidable  signs  held  out  to  deter,  and  all 
the  plagues  that  have  followed  when  those 
signs  warned  in  vain  ?  The  victims  of  those 
plagLies,  and  the  witnesses  of  their  infliction, 
could  not  say  that  the  warnings  had  been 
lying  signs  and  wonders,  as  pretending  to 
express  Heaven's  protest  against  the  evils  to 
which  the  will  of  man  had  been  permitted  to 
abandon  him. 

And  if  we  contemplate  the  Divine  Being  as 
a  revealer  of  truth  and  a  lawgiver,  the  same 
hostile  character  and  design  are  conspicuous. 
Every  thing  he  declared  or  dictated  is  instandy 
seen  to  be  adverse  to  something  of  which  it 
had  not  been  his  will  to  prevent  the  existence 


96  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

in  human  notions  or  conduct.  He  had  suffered 
these  things  to  come  into  the  world,  and  yet 
all  who  would  believe  and  obey  him  must 
oppose  them.  Well  indeed  might  the  thought- 
ful listeners  to  his  voice  feel  an  alarming 
sentiment  at  hearing  so  very  many  things 
recounted  for  them  to  be  committed  in  deadly 
strife  against ;  but  what  would  have  been  the 
piety,  or  the  prudence,  or  the  consequence,  of 
a  remonstrance  to  him  against  so  severe  a 
vocation,  on  the  plea  that  himself  had  per- 
mitted, and  could  have  prevented,  every  thing 
that  he  w^as  thus  imperatively  involving  them 
in  painful  conflict  w^ith,  over  every  step  of 
ground  till  they  should  fall  into  the  grave  ? 

We  repeat,  that  the  whole  course  of  the 
extraordinary  divine  interference  among  men 
has  been  in  the  direction,  and  has  commanded 
human  spirits,  on  their  allegiance,  to  concur 
in  the  direction,  which  we  are  endeavouring 
to  give  to  your  zeal.  In  visions  and  oracles 
sent  to  patriarchs,  In  deliverances  and  avenging 
judgments,  in  the  miraculous  suspensions  of  the 
laws  of  nature,  in  Institutions  of  religion,  in  the 
illuminations  of  prophets  and  apostles,  in  the 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  97 

excitement  of  the  best  men  to  the  most  in- 
vincible pertinacity  of  warfare,  in  the  mission 
of  angels,  and,  transcendently  above  all,  in  the 
"  manifestation  of  the  Son  of  God  to  destroy 
the  works  of  the  Devil,"  —  in  all  these  forms 
of  the  divine  dispensation,  and  in  all  the  ope- 
ration that  has  been  in  enlarging  progress  from 
them  to  this  hour,  one  spirit  breathes  one  per- 
petual emanation  of  divine  will  and  ag'ency 
against  that  which  will,  nevertheless,  be  per- 
mitted to  retain  an  existence,  but  with  lessen- 
ing power,  on  the  earth  till  a  very  late  period, 
when  the  "  Lord  shall  consume  it  with  the 
breath  of  his  mouth,  and  destroy  it  with  the 
brightness  of  his  coming."  —  Such  has  been 
the  spirit  of  all  the  Divine  Intervention.  The 
sun  is  not  more  conspicuous  by  his  own  light, 
than  this  character  of  the  religious  economy. 

Now  then  for  a  professed  servant  of  God  to 
refuse  acting  in  conformity  to  this  entire  ten- 
dency of  his  cause,  and  to  justify  himself  on 
the  ground  of  the  divine  permission  of  that 
which  the  cause  is  directed  against,  what  is  it 
but,  in  effect,  to  say  to  the  Supreme  Governor, 
—  I  behold  two  views  of  thy  government; 
13 


98  THE   GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

there  is  thy  permission  of  an  awful  array  and 
amount  of  evils,  and  there  is  a  system  of  thy 
dispensations  framed  to  work  in  most  direct 
and  absolute  opposition  to  them.  The  impos- 
sibility of  apprehending  the  unity  of  principle 
of  these  opposed  parts  of  thy  government 
throws  a  dai'k  mystery  on  the  one  of  them. 
But  with  me,  unlike  my  fellow-mortals,  the 
mystery  rests  on  the  latter  view,  on  the  econ- 
omy constituted  for  resistance  to  the  evil ; 
whereas  the  reason  for  its  permission  is  so 
plain  to  me,  that  I  can,  in  dissent  from  all  thy 
faithful  servants  since  the  world  began,  adopt 
it  as  my  rule  of  conduct.  In  pursuance  of 
this  adoption,  I  dare  to  believe  thou  art,  in 
truth,  not  so  much  the  enemy  of  this  same 
Evil  as  is  pretended,  even  in  thy  o^vn  revela- 
tion ;  and  that  I  shall,  upon  a  certain  secret 
understanding,  please  thee  fully  as  well  by 
declining  to  join  in  an  attack  upon  it,  as  by 
devoting  to  the  utmost  my  active  forces  to  co- 
operate against  it,  in  a  war  which  I  do  at  the 
same  time  perceiA'e  clearly  that  thou  thyself, 
for  what  reason  of  state  I  cannot  conjecture, 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  99 

hast  raised  and  maintained  with  a  palpable  and 
continual  interference. 

Let  us  suppose  him  to  act  in  this  spirit  toward 
his  own  soul.  When  he  looks  there,  he  sees 
there  is  a  proportion,  a  lamentable  one,  of 
"that  abominable  thing"  which  has  rendered 
the  world  so  horrid  a  scene.  But  the  Almighty 
])0\YeY  has  permitted  its  existence  there.  What 
then  ?  Can  he  on  that  account  remain  quiet, 
while  it  is  poisoning  the  essence  of  his  being, 
and  feel  as  if  it  were  an  homage  to  God  to 
second,  if  w^e  may  so  express  it,  that  permis- 
sion ?  With  plain  sad  proof  of  the  very  active 
quality  of  the  malignant  infester,  which  seems 
also  to  become,  even  w^hile  he  is  looking  at  it, 
(if  under  a  suspension  of  resistance,)  sensibly 
stronger,  by  the  force  of  a  principle  of  augmen- 
tation altogether  indefinite  if  left  to  Its  own 
progress,  and  which  tells  him,  as  in  a  demon's 
accents,  that  his  soul  Is  the  intended  victim, 
can  he  calmly  contemplate  this  permitted  state 
and  operation,  just  as  one  of  the  inexplicable 
phenomena  of  the  divine  government  ?  And 
if  he  pretended  reverential  submission,  what 
manner  of  god  could  he  deem  himself  adoring^ 


100  THE  GLORY  OF  THE   AGE, 

that  would  be  pleased  with  such  a  sacrifice  ? 
My  brethren,  unless  his  pretensions  to  religion 
are  false,  and  his  soul  is  actually  surrendering 
to  perdition,  he  will,  at  the  sight  of  this  mourn- 
ful predicament  of  his  own  spirit,  be  ardently 
intent  on  an  application  of  the  means  of  resist- 
ing the  destroyer.  And  he  will  be  at  once 
alarmed  and  indignant  if  he  should  perceive 
his  mind  admitting,  under  some  influence  of 
the  consideration  that  God  has  not  prevented 
the  awful  fact  of  sin  within  him,  any  slighter 
estimate  of  the  required  energy  and  prompti- 
tude of  the  resistance,  than  that  which  should 
be  commensurate  to  the  evil  itself,  \dewed  ab- 
solutely, in  all  its  atrocity  and  acti\ity. 

But  now  let  him  revert  to  the  heathen  slaves 
of  darkness  and  sin.  —  If  it  would  be  cmelty 
to  his  own  soul,  to  make  the  lighter  of  the  in- 
vasion, or  the  means  of  expulsion,  of  its  deadly 
enemy,  because  God  has  not  precluded  nor 
exterminated  it,  he  may  be  reminded,  and  all 
the  friends  of  Christianity  may  be  reminded, 
of  the  obligation  implied  in  the  second  great 
commandment,  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour 
as  thyself." 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  101 

Try  once  more  how  strongly  you  can  bring 
upon  your  minds  the  reahty  of  an  immense 
multitude  of  spirits,  of  your  own  nature,  existing 
on  a  remote  continent.  You  can  by  thought 
place  yourseh^es  as  sensibly  amidst  the  coun- 
tenances, the  vital  warmth,  the  talk,  the  wor- 
ship, the  infelicities,  of  people  at  the  distance 
of  some  thousands  of  leagues,  reckoned  through 
the  air,  as  of  the  inhabitants  of  an  adjacent 
part  of  your  own  country.  With  as  absolute 
a  sense  of  fact  as  if  you  were  at  this  hour  in 
India,  and  were  just  now  descrying  a  tyger 
crouching  to  spring  on  one  ill-fated  person,  or 
a  serpent  throwing  its  folds  round  another,  you 
can  behold  the  prodigiously  numerous  tribe  of 
souls,  actual  hving  immortal  essences,  images 
and  counterparts  of  your  own,  as  it  were 
watched  for,  fascinated,  sprung  upon,  grappled, 
by  things  arisen  in  fearful  eruption  from  the 
bottomless  pit.  Look  at  them  involved  in  the 
power  of  the  Old  Serpent.  —  If  we  might  en- 
force the  representation  by  a  simile,  suppose 
the  case,  that  a  professedly  benevolent  man, 
sojourning  in  that  country,  happened  to  be  in 
a  spot  where  he  saw  a  tyger,    eyeing  with 


102  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

deadly  glare  the  intended  but  unapprehensive 
victim,  or  a  serpent  in  the  very  act  of  contract- 
ing itself  to  dart  on  an  unwarned  human  object ; 
and  suppose  too,  that  this  spectator  had  an 
advantage  of  position  which  exempted  him 
from  danger,  and  also  that  he  had  in  his  hands 
the  most  efficient  means  for  striking  the  mon- 
ster with  death  or  sudden  fright ;  or  that  at  the 
very  least  he  could  alarm  the  person  in  peril. 
Now  what  sort  of  philanthropist  shall  we  rep- 
resent if  we  next  suppose,  that  while  looking 
at  this  creature  of  living  flesh  and  blood,  who 
is  perhaps  approaching  every  instant  nearer 
the  spot  where  death  is  lurking,  he  coolly 
thinks  what  a  hopeless  and  fearful  plight ; 
wonders  that  the  God  of  nature  should  suffer, 
or  theologically  accounts  for  his  suffering, 
beasts  of  prey  and  serpents  in  a  world  made 
for  man  ;  considers  that,  at  any  rate,  as  God 
does  suffer  them,  men  must  of  course  be  de- 
voured by  them  ;  and  so,  quietly  awaits  and 
witnesses  the  catastrophe,  highly  self-compla- 
cent, perhaps,  in  the  sort  of  selfish  piety  with 
which  he  goes  away  blessing  the  Providence 
which  has  not  doomed  him  to  be  the  victim. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  103 

We  need  not  make  the  application.  We 
will  only  suggest  whether,  since  the  whole 
accouniableness  for  all  the  error  and  wickedness 
of  paganism  must  rest  somewhere,  the  allevia- 
tion obtained  before  the  Supreme  Judge  by 
the  heathens  who  have  been  denied  the  means 
of  deHverance  from  so  wretched  a  condition, 
may  not  be  at  the  expense  of  those  who  shall 
have  refused  to  try  those  means  upon  them  ; 
and  then  whether,  in  the  solemn  time  of  ad- 
judgment, these  latter  will  dare  to  reflect  off 
this  accountableness  for  omission  on  the  Judge 
himself,  in  the  allegation  that  the  evil  was  of 
his  own  permission, — when  they  \^^ll  have  the 
consciousness  that  he  ga\'e  them  means  of  at 
least  attempting:  its  destruction. 

This  religious  fatalism,  from  the  dominion  of 
which  we  should  be  glad  to  see  the  active 
powers  of  all  good  men  rescued,  may  some- 
what change  its  tone  ;  still,  however,  aiming  to 
elude  the  requisition  to  come  forth  in  the  ac- 
tivity of  the  cause.  It  may  affect  to  recover 
from  the  kind  of  hopeless  dead  prostration  of 
feeling  at  the  awful  fact  of  God's  permission  of 
so  dreadful  an  evil,  into  adoration  of  his  power 


104  THE   GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

as  almighty  to  destroy  it.     And  how  loftily 
God  shall  be  extolled,  and   how  emphatically 
man  shall  be  degraded,  when  it  is  hoped  that 
some  absolution  from   duty  may  be  suborned 
from  the  contrast !      Feelings   of  indolence, 
combined  "with  ideas  of  the  sovereignty  of  God, 
will   form  a  state  of  mind  prolific  of  such  re- 
flections as  these  :   "  Of  w  hat  consequence  can 
be  the  trivial  efforts  of  such  insignificant  crea- 
tures, as  co-operating  or  not  with  the  energy 
of  an  Almiglity  power  ?     What  signify,  in  a 
great  process  of  nature,  some  few  rain-drops  or 
dew-drops  the  more  or  the  less  ?     What  are 
we,  to  be  talking,  in  strains  of  idle  pomp,  of 
converting  the  people  of  half  a  world  ?     How 
reduced  to  contempt,  how  vanishing  from  per- 
ception, will  be  the  effects  of  all  our  petty 
toils,  when  mightier  powers  shall  come  into 
action  ;  as  the  footsteps  of  insects  and  birds 
are  effaced  and  lost  under  the  trample  of  ele- 
phants.    Were   it  not  even  temerity  to  affect 
to  take  the  course  where  the  chariot  of  Om- 
nipotence is  to  drive  ;  as  if  we  would  intrude 
to  share  the  achievements  proper  to  a  God,  or 
fancy  that  something  magnificent  which  he  has 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  105 

to  do,  will  not  be  done  unless  we  are  there  ? 
No,  let  our  text  be,  as  best  becomes  the  hu- 
mility of  mortals  and  sinners,  '  Be  still,  and 
know  that  I  am  God.'  If  he  wills  the  con- 
version of  the  heathen  nations,  he  has  such 
powders  and  means  for  accomplishing  his  pur- 
pose as  may  well  allow  a  sabbath  to  the  hands 
of  all  his  servants,  while  their  souls  may  adore 
him  in  his  triumphs." — Very  true;  and  so,  in 
the  literal  warfare  referred  to  in  our  text,  there 
were  means  of  overthrowing  the  heathen  in- 
vaders without  the  assistance  of  the  people  of 
Meroz,  or  any  other  people  ;  for  the  stars  in 
their  courses  w^ere  to  fio;ht  ao;ainst  Sisera.  It 
was  not  because  he  needed  them  for  combat- 
ants, that  the  God  of  armies  had  required  their 
presence  in  the  battle.  —  After  what  has  been 
already  said  of  the  employment  of  feeble  means 
to  produce  a  triumphantly  disproportionate 
effect,  it  is  superfluous  to  make  any  other  an- 
swer to  this  indolence,  or  indifference,  or  pride, 
or  all  of  them  together,  pleading  under  the 
semblance  of  piety,  than  an  admonitory  sug- 
gestion, that,  as  it  has  been  hitherto  God's 
usual  method  to  employ  human  instrumentality 


106  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

in  his  great  works  of  beneficence,  his  now  de- 
clining to  do  so,  would  but  be  the  alarming 
expression  of  his  judgment  that  the  human 
agents  now  are  not  worth  being  employed  on 
earth,  nor  being  translated  to  heaven.  One 
should  think  that  a  dread  of  the  fatal  privilege 
of  exemption  under  such  a  judgment,  would 
suppress  the  disposition  to  seek,  and  the  willing- 
ness to  accept,  an  exemption  on  any  ground 
whatever. 

The  religious  fatalism,  in  a  still  further  mod- 
ification, will  make  professions  of  anticipating 
with  great  delight  the  certain  accomplishment 
of  the  glorious  revolution  in  question,  when 
God's  selected  time  shall  arrive.  Then,  too, 
as  in  former  great  changes,  there  will  be  noble 
Avork,  and  enough  of  it,  for  such  humble  in- 
struments as  men  to  perform  :  meanwhile,  be- 
ware of  premature  attempts,  and  wait  for  the 
sisjns  that  the  time  is  come.  Lancruaoe  like 
this  has,  within  the  memory  of  many  of  you, 
been  among  the  common-places  of  our  Chris- 
tian communities.  If  there  be  still  some  cau- 
tious Christians  who  are  reluctant  to  let  it  grow 
obsolete,  we  might  ask  them  whether  they 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  107 

have  exactly  figured  in  their  minds  in  what 
manner  the  expected  grand  process  is  to  begin, 
or  what  appearances  they  could  accept  as  signs 
that  ,the  period  is  come  when  their  efforts 
would  not  be  like  a  vain  attempt  to  constrain 
the  fulfilment  of  a  divine  purpose  before  its 
appointed  time.  Are  there  to  be  extraordinary 
meteors,  significantly  passing  eastward  as  they 
vanish  ?  Are  they  to  hear  that  the  temples 
of  Seeva  are  sunk  suddenly  in  ruins  at  the 
stroke  of  thunder  ?  Or,  still  more  of  prodigy, 
are  all  the  chief  statesmen,  and  mercantile  men, 
and  military  men,  especially  concerned  in  the 
afi:airs  of  the  East,  to  become  with  one  accord 
inspired  with  a  fervent  zeal  for  the  Christianizing 
of  Asia,  perhaps  impelled  literally  to  a  spiritual 
crusade  against  Hindoo  idolatry  ? 

Perhaps  they  will,  after  all,  disclaim  the 
expectation  of  any  extraordinary  signals  from 
heaven,  when  it  occurs  to  them  that  they  are 
in  danger  of  the  impiety  of  demanding  a  specific 
change  in  God's  mode  of  declaring  his  mind  to 
men.  And  probably  they  will  profess  that 
they  wait  for  no  otlier  tokens  than  such  as 
might  afford  a  rational  presumption,  according 


108  THE  GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

to  the  mles  of  judgment  commonly  admitted 
among  wise  men.  Then  we  may  confidently 
ask  why  they  should  not  accept,  as  the  re- 
quired signs,  the  circumstances  that  have  at- 
tended, thus  far,  this  Christian  enterprise  in 
India.  Is  it  to  be  taken  as  a  rebuke  from 
Heaven,  on  a  rash  anticipation  of  Heaven's 
designs,  that  our  missionaries  have  been  kept 
in  their  positions  and  their  work  with  a  general 
impunity  and  freedom,  notwithstanding  that 
during  many  years  of  the  time  there  prevailed 
against  them  a  systematic,  unrelenting  hostihty 
of  spirit,  in  authorities  which  in  all  human  ap- 
pearance might  liave  crushed  them  in  a  mo- 
ment, and  were  subject  to  no  visible  cause  of 
restraint  on  their  will, — a  preservation  some- 
w^hat  resembling  that  of  Daniel  in  the  lions' 
den  ?  Or,  that  the  comparatively  little  rancour, 
and  the  very  considerable  favour,  experienced 
among  the  natives,  have  seemed  to  betray 
some  divine  coercion  put  upon  the  lions  and 
the  furies  of  direct  paganism  itself?  Or,  that 
they  have  been  uniformly  preserved  in  the  ex- 
cellence of  the  Christian  character  in  a  scene 
presenting    many   temptations   to   forfeit   the 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF  MISSIONS.  109 

distinction,  and  while  bearing  the  moral  respon- 
sibility of  an  undertaking  in  which  that  forfeit- 
ure w"oukl  have  been  fatal  ?  Or,  that  by  the 
multiplicity  and  extent  of  their  labours  and 
attainments  they  are  constantly  recalling  to  our 
imagination  the  hundred-handed  giant  of  fable  ? 
Or,  that  between  the  produce  of  their  own 
exertions  and  the  increasing  supplies  from  the 
rehgious  public,  pecuniary  means  have  never 
failed  for  the  constantly  enlarging  prosecution 
of  the  design,  —  even  a  very  great  disaster 
having  operated  as  if  the  fall  of  an  edifice 
should  bring  a  large  treasure  of  gold  to  light?* 
Or,  that  while  the  sacred  Scriptures  have  been 
spreading  with  astonishing  rapidity  among  the 
nations  of  the  East,  the  undertaking  which  has 
given  them  this  range  of  mischief  to  the  gods, 
has  produced  several  marked  good  effects  in 
our  religious  societies  at  home ;  especially  in 
the  point  of  helping  to  break  up,  by  the  intro- 
duction of  so  many  new  subjects  connected 
with  religion,  the  monotony  which  too  much 

*  Alluding  to  the  fire  which,  some  years  since,  reduced 
to  ashes  the  printing-office  at  Serampore,  with  its  im- 
mense literary  stores  and  other  materials  for  the  service 
of  the  mission. 


110  THE   GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

prevailed  in  their  religious  services,  topics,  and 
feelings  ? 

What  is  the  interpretation  which  our  sooth- 
sayers of  the  colder  climate  of  religious  feeling 
put  upon  these  signs,  conjoined,  as  we  are  grat- 
ified to  view  them  conjoined,  with  the  enlarging 
missionary  exertions  and  successes  of  our  breth- 
ren of  other  religious  denominations  ?  Or  will 
they  pronounce,  that  circumstances  like  these 
are  no  signs ;  and  sagely  observe  to  us,  that  in 
the  great  concourse  of  casualties,  it  is  at  all 
times  possible  enough  for  a  sanguine  spirit  to 
find  a  number  that  may  be  converted  into  inti- 
mations that  a  favourite  project  of  its  own  is 
also  the  intention  of  Heaven.  When  they 
have  said  this,  they  may  consider  whether  they 
should  not,  in  their  solicitous  and  alarmed  ven- 
eration for  Heaven's  appointment  of  times  and 
seasons,  abet  the  gods  and  their  priests  in  an 
appeal  to  the  Lord  of  the  world  against  these 
missionary  intruders,  as  committing  impiety 
against  Him  in  having  "come  to  torment  them 
before  the  time." 

It  has  been  the  lot  of  a  number  of  the  per- 
sons who  have  believed  themselves  to  be  obey- 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   xMISSIONS.  HI 

ing  the  will  of  the  Supreme  Authority  by 
leaving  this  country  in  prosecution  of  our  So- 
ciety's undertaking  in  Hindoostan,  to  die  in 
the  service.  They  had  devoted  themselves 
so  to  die,  and  rejoiced  in  the  confidence  that 
they  were  also  devoted  by  a  superior  decree. 
In  what  manner  may  we  believe  that  their 
departing  spirits  have  been  received  by  their 
great  Master?  Has  it  been  a  qualified  "Well 
done,  good  and  faithful  servant,"  that  they 
have  heard?  —  as  if  he  should  say,  —  Feeble 
in  judgment,  rash  in  temperament,  but  honest 
in  intention,  you  are  pardoned  through  a  pe- 
culiar extension  of  mercy,  and  are  admitted 
now  to  a  state  of  illumination  in  which  you 
may  cultivate  the  humility  that  was  so  defec- 
tive on  earth,  and  see  in  the  future  progress  of 
your  Lord's  administration,  how  long  his  serv- 
ants ought  to  have  repressed  the  presumptuous 
forwardness  of  their  zeal. 

No,  this  could  not  be  their  reception  in  a 
world  wiiere  they  w^ere  soon  to  be  joined  by 
the  first-fruits  of  that  very  zeal,  those  converts 
from  idolatry,  who,  subsequently  to  some  of 
their  teachers,  have  died  in  the  faith  of  Christ, 


112  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

and  carried  demonstrative  living  proof  to  heav- 
en, that  the  true  rehgion  had  not  in  a  premature 
and  officious  zeal  been  conveyed  sooner  than 
the  divine  appointment  had  commissioned  it  to 
go,  sooner  than  the  diilne  power  was  ready  to 
accompany  it,  to  a  region  whither  some  of  its 
professed  friends  would  not  have  contributed 
to  send  it.  And  if  we  may  imagine  the  nature 
of  the  emotion  in  the  great  assembly  at  the 
arrival  of  these  spirits  from  the  dominions  of 
idolatry,  we  shall  not  believ^e  it  to  have  been 
the  melancholy  felicitation  which  should  wel- 
come them  as  almost  solitary  exceptions  to  a 
destiny,  regarded  as  still  permanently  abiding 
on  the  immense  division  of  the  human  race 
whence  they  came.  We  cannot  conceive  of 
an  unmlngled  delight  in  receiving  them  as 
translated  thither  chiefly  to  exemplify  that 
sovereignty  of  God  which  he  will  manifest  in 
every  department  of  his  government,  by  sus- 
pending In  rare  instances  his  most  general  ap- 
pointments ;  as  two  Individuals  have  been 
exempted  from  the  general  law  of  mortality. 
The  sentiment  without  which  the  joy  would 
be  languid,  must  have  been  that  which  should 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  113 

hail  them  as  signs  that  a  decreed  change  of 
dispensation,  a  new  aspect  of  the  divine  sove- 
reignty, is  beginning  to  shine  on  a  dark  hemis- 
phere of  the  world ;  that  death  is  becoming 
incomparably  more  tributary  to  heaven  ;  and 
that  the  ancient  barrier  between  the  realms  of 
Asia  and  the  kingdom  of  eternal  glory  is  be- 
ginning to  break  down. 

This  indulfrence  of  tliouirht  in  representing 
to  ourselves  the  feelings  exDerienced  in  an  in- 

O  1 

visible  and  superior  world,  is  quite  within  the 
just  range  of  our  contemplation  of  the  subject. 
It  is  a  noble  distinction  of  religion,  that  (once 
admitted  as  true,)  it  affords  a  rational  substance 
to  bear  out  the  most  imaginative  exercise  of 
thought.  It  is  a  ground  on  which  our  ideal  ex- 
cursions may  with  sober  propriety  go  such  a 
length  as  they  cannot  attempt  on  other  grounds 
without  turning  into  poetry  or  into  vanity.  It 
verifies  to  us  as  a  reality  a  solemn  relation  be- 
tween us  and  another  economy  of  existence  ; 
and  constitutes  a  vital  intermedium  through 
which  we  have  the  sense  of  a  real  interest  in 
beings  and  a  state  beyond  the  sphere  of  this 
world.  Thus  religion,  believed  and  felt,  is  the 
14 


114  THE  GLORY  OF   THE   AGE, 

amplitude  of  our  moral  nature.  And  how 
wretched  an  object  therefore  is  a  mind,  espe- 
cially of  thought,  sensibility,  and  genius,  con- 
demned to  that  poverty  and  insulation  which 
infidelity  inflicts,  by  annihilating  around  it  the 
medium  of  a  sensible  interest  in  the  existence, 
the  emotions,  the  activities,  of  a  higher  order  of 
beings  !  Our  Lord  tells  us  of  great  and  happy 
intelligences  in  the  invisible  world,  who  rejoice 
over  a  sinner  when  he  repents.  It  is  quite  ra- 
tional, then,  to  have  indulged  our  imaginations 
for  a  moment  in  ideas  of  the  reception,  in  that 
scene,  of  those  first  converts  from  paganism,  in 
the  course  of  our  Mission,  who  have  been 
followed  in  death  by  some  of  the  persons  whose 
labours  were  crowned  with  this  success.  And 
we  are  especially  warranted  in  the  most  vivid 
imagination  which  it  is  possible  to  form  of  the 
emotions  of  these  proclaimers  and  these  converts 
of  the  truth,  in  their  mutual  recognition,  when 
thus  re-united,  and  in  communion  with  the 
preceding  believers,  apostles,  and  confessors. 
If  but  a  comparatively  faint  apprehension  of 
the  emphasis  of  those  congratulations  could  be 
brought,  by  some  momentary  illapse,  upon  the 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF  MISSIONS.  115 

souls  of  the  most  neutral  or  even  the  most 
hostile  spectators  of  the  attempt  which  has 
had  such  an  effect  in  the  happiest  society,  it 
would  instantly  turn  to  grief  at  the  thought, 
that  those  heavenly  felicities  had  owed  none 
of  that  rapture  to  them. 

And  let  us  remind  those  professed  Christians, 
whose  coldness  toward  a  great  project  of  evan- 
gelization would  justify  itself  under  a  plea  of 
reverently  awaiting  the  disclosure  of  the  divine 
purposes,  that  by  their  profession  they  aspire 
to  join  ere  long  that  company  to  which  departed 
missionaries  and  their  converts  have  been  added. 
It  may  be  the  destination  of  some  of  them  to 
leave  this  world  at  nearly  the  time  appoint- 
ed for  the  removal  by  death  of  other  of  these 
indefatigable  labourers,  and  of  more  of  their 
proselytes.  In  the  reflections  which  may  be 
excited  by  such  an  idea,  will  there  be  no  sen- 
timent partaking  of  apprehension  ?  No  mor- 
tifying anticipation  arises  at  the  thought  of 
entering  the  other  world  in  company  with  an 
angelic  being,  the  different  rank  of  his  nature 
precluding  all  comparison,  or  precluding  re- 
proach for  the  difference,  if  comparison  were 


116  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

made.  But  methinks  there  is  something  to 
cause  great  displacency,  and  even  a  degree  of 
intimidation,  in  the  thought  of  approaching  the 
most  illustrious  society  in  the  universe  in  the 
company  of  spirits  of  our  own  nature  and  our 
own  times,  trained  under  nearly  similar  privi- 
leges and  instructions,  or  possibly  the  very 
same,  but  who  through  superior  zeal  shall  have 
left  us  in  an  immense  disparity.  Think  whether 
it  be  impossible  that,  even  on  the  passage  to 
heaven,  there  might  be  an  unwelcome  sense 
of  the  contrast  between  persons,  who,  in  going 
thither,  shall  be  finishing  a  course  of  ardent 
devotedness  to  their  Divine  Lord,  in  exertions 
to  extend  his  kingdom  in  destruction  of  the 
cruel  reign  of  superstition,  made  with  a  degree 
of  success  attested  by  immortal  spirits  of  re- 
deemed heathens  that  shall  have  preceded 
them  to  the  sky,  and  others  that  are  to  follow, 
— and  persons  who,  having  been  in  circum- 
stances so  similar  to  theirs  in  the  introduction 
of  life,  and  having  professed  the  same  devoted- 
ness to  Christ,  shall  yet  be  conscious  of  having 
scarcely  made  an  effort  in  aid  of  that  service, 
of  having  scarcely  perhaps  given  it  their  cordial 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  117 

good  wishes  ;  conscious  (may  we  not  surmise, 
in  some  instances  ?)  of  having  hardly  been  sorry 
that  the  comparatively  small  number,  as  yet, 
of  conv^ersions  from  heathenism,  should  seem 
to  afford  some  advantage  to  the  recusant  or 
caviller.  INIay  not  the  thought  of  the  feelings 
possible  to  be  excited  at  such  a  time  by  such 
a  contrast,  suggest  to  Christians  -whose  faculties 
seem  more  readily  applicable  to  the  exercise 
of  finding  objections  to  animated  schemes  of 
Christian  experiment,  than  to  that  of  devising 
means  for  their  success,  a  new  topic  for  solici- 
tude and  perhaps  for  prayer,  namely,  that  they 
may  be  permitted  to  enter  the  superior  state  in 
a  way  that  shall  not  humediately  bring  them  in 
communication  or  comparison  with  their  breth- 
ren ascending  from  the  war  against  idolatry  ? 
At  least,  in  order  to  be  entirely  fi^ee  from  the 
anticipation  of  any  reflections,  tending  to  throw 
a  shade  over  the  joy  of  passing  into  the  great 
]\Iaster's  presence  at  nearly  the  same  time  as 
those  devoted  spirits,  there  must  be  the  testi- 
mony of  conscience  that  in  some  other  manner 
his  service  is  zealously  prosecuted.  The  man 
indifierent  or   opposed   to   the    enterprise    in 


118  THE  GLORY  OF  THE   AGE, 

which  these  men  are  to  die,  but  who  yet  pro- 
fesses to  take  an  interest  in  the  advancement 
of  rehgion  and  the  general  good,  can  avoid  the 
apprehensiveness  of  such  a  future  comparison 
only  by  having  evidence  to  himself  that,  though 
projects  which  seem  to  him  to  partake  some- 
what of  enthusiasm  are  not  exactly  adapted  to 
seize  his  mind,  he  is  diligently  intent  on  pro- 
moting the  cause  of  God  in  plainer,  less  adven- 
turous, and  let  him  call  them,  if  he  will,  soberer 
methods.  But,  in  truth,  experience  is  not  in 
favour  of  our  expecting  a  very  active  zeal  for 
extending  Christianity  in  any  method,  from 
those  who  recoil  from  missionary  projects  as 
premature  and  enthusiastic. 

For  ourselves,  my  brethren,  when  we  think 
of  those  who  are  thus  appointed  to  fall  in  the 
immediate  conflict  with  the  powers  of  paganism, 
shall  we  not  earnestly  desire  and  pray,  that  we 
may  be  so  animated  to  promote  the  Christian 
cause  in  every  practicable  way,  that  we  may 
never  have  reason  to  wish  these  men  had  not 
been  our  contemporaries,  no  more  privileged 
than  ourselves  in  early  life  ;  or  that  there  would 
be  an  oblivion  of  this,  to  avert  any  pain  of 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  119 

comparison  when  they  and  we  shall  go  to  the 
account. 

TRUE    IDEA    OF    DIVINE     SOVEREIGNTY. 

To  return,  but  for  one  moment,  to  the  re« 
pressive  influence  on  some  good  men's  princi- 
ples of  action  and  hope,  from  the  idea  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  divine  appointments,  we  may 
observe,  that  the  most  assured  behef  in  the 
divine  decrees,  as  comprehending  all  things, 
has  not  necessarily  the  effect  of  paralyzing  the 
active  powers.  There  is  no  denying  that  such 
is  its  tendency  in  cold,  inanimate,  indolent 
spirits,  that  are  really  indifferent  to  the  objects 
demanding  their  exertion.  And  so  with  re« 
spect  to  any  doctrine  of  religious  or  moral  truth _> 
there  is  a  possible  state  of  mind  w^hich  is  apt  to 
take  from  it  an  injurious  impression.  But  let 
there  be  an  earnest  interest  about  the  objects 
in  question,  and  then  the  zeal  and  activity  will 
be  incited  rather  than  repressed  by  the  faith  in 
all-comprehending  and  absolute  decrees,  Ac^ 
cordingly  it  has  been,  we  think,  for  the  gi^eater 
proportioii,  by  decided  predestinarians,  that  the 


120  THE  GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

most  ardent  and  efficient  exertions  of  religiou3 
innovation  have  been  made  upon  the  inveterate 
evils  of  the  world.  That  they  were  not  checked 
and  chilled  by  this  article  of  their  faith,  is  the 
least  that  their  conduct  testified  of  its  effect. 
Not  only  were  they  not  withheld  from  driving 
impetuously  against  the  hated  thing  before 
them  by  any  surmise  whether  it  might  not, 
for  the  present,  be  guarded  invisibly  by  the 
shield  of  a  decree.  Not  only  did  they  dart 
their  weapons,  w^hen  the  enemy  appeared  to 
be  within  their  reach,  without  being  stopped 
by  any  suspicion  of  an  optical  deception  in 
this  seeming  nearness,  this  possibility  of  striking 
it.  This  is  only  supposing  them  not  to  be  the 
less  energetic  in  consequence  of  their  predes- 
tinarian  faith  ;  it  is  what  they  might  be,  sup- 
posing them  the  while  to  forget  it.  But  it 
was  not  as  forgetting  their  principle,  and  being 
actuated,  for  the  time,  solely  by  the  independ- 
ent force  of  different  ones,  that  they  so  nobly 
exerted  themselves.  No  !  they  acted  in  the 
full  recollection  of  it,  as  a  source  of  invigoration 
no  less  indispensable  than  for  Antasus  to  touch 
tlie   earth.      It  was   in   the   element   of  this 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  121 

doctrine  of  decrees,  that  they  felt  their  impetus 
the  mightier,  their  weapons  the  sharper,  their 
aim  the  surer. 

And  while  their  opponents  in  belief  might 
be  wondering  at  the  phenomenon  of  such  a 
glow  of  life,  and  play  of  strength,  in  an  ele- 
ment which  they  had  been  constantly  pro- 
nouncing the  most  mephitic,  in  the  whole  world 
of  opinion,  to  moral  energy,  the  persons  on 
whom  the  faith  had  this  influence  could  have 
shown  how  explicable  and  how  far  from  absurd 
was  such  a  practical  effect,  in  the  case  of  men 
in  the  prosecution  of  plans  for  the  destruction 
of  what  was  opposed  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 
The  first  consideration  in  the  matter  w^as  the 
trite  and  general  one, — they  were  certain  that 
the  Almighty  will  make  very  great  use  of 
human  agents  in  what  remains  of  the  course 
of  his  dispensations  in  this  w^orld.  Next, 
whatever  concealment  may  rest  on  the  precise 
nature  of  his  more  special  detemiinations, 
w^hich  constitute,  so  to  speak,  the  divisible 
portions  of  his  one  grand  design,  there  can 
be  no  question,  with  believers  in  revelation, 
whether  that  grand  design  be  a  progressive 
15 


122  THE   GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

demollilon  of  the  dreadful  tyranny  of  evil  over 
the  human  race.  Now  that  was  what  they 
were  mtent  upon ;  and  they  were  putting 
themselves  directly  into  his  hands  as  willing 
instruments  to  be  applied  to  that  use.  And 
was  it  not  (they  thought)  most  reasonable  to 
entertain  a  general  assurance  that  willing  agents, 
offered  to  him  for  a  purpose  which  he  is  de- 
temnined  to  accomplish,  would  have  their  ap- 
pointment for  effective  service  ?  If  so  many 
w^ould  be  required  that  even  repugnant  or 
undesigning  ones  would  be  made  to  contribute 
and  co-operate,  by  his  constraining  and  over- 
ruling Providence,  the  willing  and  zealous  ones 
might  in  all  reason  be  sure  of  being  put  to  such 
an  use.  The  disposition  itself  was  inspired, 
they  thought,  for  the  very  purpose  of  adapting 
them,  and  the  adaptation  given  with  the  in- 
tention of  employing  them.  Thus,  upon  the 
certainty  of  their  coincidence  with  God's  in- 
tention, considered  generally,  they  founded 
and  justified  a  confidence  that  they  had  a  gen- 
eral appomtment  to  do  something  in  his  great 
work,  —  an  appointment,  that  is  to  say,  to 
promote  it  in  some  way  or  other. 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  123 

But  no  man  who  is  powerfully  actuated  can 
stop  in  generals.  Those  devout  predestina- 
rians,  those  genuine  adorers  of  the  God  of 
decrees,  were  earnestly  attentive  to  the  man- 
ner in  which  his  general  and  comprehensive 
design  was  seen,  in  his  revelation,  resolving 
itself  into  defined  parts,  and  taking  the  form  of 
several  great  purposes,  distinguishable  from 
one  another,  while  all  combined  in  the  entire 
design.  Of  these  several  purposes,  thus  dis- 
tinguished and  announced,  there  was  probably 
one  which  was  of  a  nature  more  specially  to 
interest  their  feelings,  and  draw  to  this  partic- 
ular direction  the  zeal  and  co-operation  which 
were  in  devoted  readiness  to  coincide  with  the 
divine  intentions  as  regarded  generally.  And 
when  they  felt  their  general  coincidence  of 
spirit  thus  determined  to  one  marked  division 
of  the  divine  plan,  they  acquired  a  still  more 
animated  assurance  of  their  appointment  to  a 
practicable  and  successful  service,  in  proportion 
as  they  thus  came  more  distinctly  to  see  how 
they  might  co-operate  in  that  design. 

Nor  was  this  all ;  for  wlien  they  thus  saw- 
one  particular  part  of  the  scheme  of  the  divine 


124  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

intention  manifested  with  considerable  definite- 
ness,  they  feh  an  irresistible  tendency  to  make 
it  more  definite  still,  by  resolving  this  too  into 
particulars.  For  example  ;  if  revelation  has 
declared  the  destruction  of  superstition  to  be 
one  leading  object  comprehended  in  the  great 
general  intention,  their  zeal  has  impelled  them 
to  regard  this  declaration  as  bearing  with 
special  emphasis  on  those  particular  forms  of 
superstition,  which  they  w^ere  most  intent  on 
destroying.  Those  particular  forms,  they  have 
said,  so  eminently  hateful,  cannot  but  be  very 
marked  objects  of  the  exterminating  intention 
of  the  Supreme  Will.  It  has  seemed  to  these 
men  as  if  the  whole  force  of  the  general  decree 
were  converging  to  strike  just  where  they 
wished  to  strike.  And  as  the  principle  of 
destruction  is  to  be  conveyed  through  the 
means  of  human  agents,  who  so  likely  to  be 
employed,  they  said,  as  we  that  are  already 
on  fire  to  destroy  ?  Beyond  all  doubt,  it  is 
exactly  here  that  we  have  our  decreed  and 
unalterable  allotment.  Exactly  here  it  is,  that 
our  will  and  the  supreme  will  coalesce  to  a 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  125 

purpose  which  defies  all  chance  and  all  created 
power. 

But  their  assurance  that  their  intention,  as 
fixed  on  a  particular  selected  object,  was  deci- 
dedly identical  with  that  of  the  Almighty,  did 
not  authorize  itself  solely  by  thus  giving  to 
those  declarations,  which  express  the  divine 
purpose  in  comprehensive  terms,  a  more  de- 
terminate bearing  on  a  special  object.  For 
some  inspired  declarations  were  found  which 
were  themselves  of  special  import.  They 
evidently  pointed  out,  by  their  own  terms, 
with  much  definiteness,  certain  distinct  parts 
and  special  processes  in  the  general  scheme 
which  Providence  will  execute.  These  ap- 
peared as  departments  or  sections,  (if  we  may 
so  express  it,)  within  wider  divisions  of  opera- 
tion which  are  still  themselves  but  parts  of  the 
grand  scheme  ;  as,  for  example,  the  foredoom- 
ed destruction  of  the  Popish  superstition, 
though  a  thing  of  such  magnitude,  is  only  a 
portion  of  the  divine  plan  for  the  destruction 
of  superstition  in  general,  which  is  yet  but  a 
part  of  the  entire  scheme  announced  for  ac- 
complishment.    The   devout  men  who  have 


12G  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

sought  their  incitement  and  their  strength  in 
the  decrees  of  Heaven,  have  often  beheved 
that  they  saw,  in  some  of  these  more  defined 
and  special  portions,  in  these  comparatively- 
distinct  representations  of  movements  which 
are  to  fulfil  on  earth  the  purposes  of  Heaven, 
the  very  image  of  such  designs  as  they  were 
zealous  to  prosecute.  It  was  quite  certain  at 
least  that  those  appointed  operations  must  at 
any  rate  involve  such  as  they  were  projecting 
or  attempting ;  and  the  predicted  success  of 
the  whole  must  be  the  success  of  the  included 
parts. 

But,  they  said  again,  there  are  predestinated 
agents  ;  and  who  still  so  likely  as  men  who 
shall  be  ready  with  their  life  and  their  death 
for  precisely  that  service  ?  The  inference  was 
not  far  off; — These  very  plans  and  proceed- 
ings of  ours  are  decreed,  as  portions  of  the 
sovereign  scheme  ;  we  and  our  work  are  a 
part  of  eternal  destiny. 

We  are  not  here  called  upon  to  suggest  the 
cautions  against  the  possible  excesses  and  dan- 
gers of  this  confident  assurance,  in  good  men, 
that  their  designs  are  specifically  identical  with 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  127 

the  divine  purposes.  Our  object  was  to  show, 
that  the  consideration  of  sovereign  decrees, 
which  cold,  unwilhng  minds  are  so  ready  to 
allege  for  their  inertness,  and  which  is  so  com- 
monly asserted  to  have  necessarily  that  con- 
sequence, may,  on  the  contrary,  become  one 
of  the  mightiest  forces  for  action.  It  is  this 
that  can  make,  but  under  a  far  nobler  modifi- 
cation, the  man  that  the  poets  have  delighted 
to  feign,  who  would  maintain  his  purpose 
thous^h  the  world  fell  in  ruins  around  him.  A 
missionary  against  the  paganism  of  the  Hindoos 
may  feel  an  animation  specially  appropriate  to 
the  service,  in  this  assurance  that  his  intention 
is  the  intention  of  God.  Those  people  fortify 
themselves  in  the  notion,  or  the  pretence,  that 
they  are  immediately  actuated  by  some  deity, 
and  therefore  fulfilling,  under  a  law  of  necessity, 
his  determinations :  the  missionary  will  feel 
peculiar  invigoration  in  advancing  to  the  assault 
of  a  superstition  with  such  a  principle  in  its 
front,  in  the  force  of  a  principle  analogous  in 
form,  but  of  heavenly  essence.  While  they 
will  have  it,  that  he  may  as  w^ell  spare  the 
eftbrts  on  them  wdiich  it  were  his  more  proper 


128  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

business  to  level  at  the  gods,  if  he  could  reach 
them,  the  energy  of  his  soul  will  reply,  that 
he  accepts  the  challenge  so  made  for  those 
enthroned  abominations,  for  that  he  verily  be- 
lieves himself  and  his  confraternity  to  be  an 
Avatar  for  their  destruction. 

We  have  dwelt  too  long  on  this  topic  of  re- 
ligious fatalism,  a  term  we  have  employed  to 
signify  a  perverted  application,  in  reasoning 
and  feeling,  of  the  doctrine  which  acknov.l- 
edges  God's  sovereign  and  unalterable  predes- 
tination of  events.  Our  excuse  must  be,  that 
these  reasonings  and  feelings  are  peculiarly  apt 
to  suggest  themselves  in  contravention  to  such 
claims  as  those  we  are  at  present  wishing  to 
exhibit.  And  besides  their  own  direct  force, 
they  lend  strength  to  other  objections  and 
repugnant  feelings  not  arising  from  so  specula- 
tive a  source.  The  meanest  of  the  passions, 
that  can  make  an  opposition  to  a  worthy  proj- 
ect, or  withhold  from  it  the  necessary  aid,  are 
very  ready  to  find  an  excuse,  a  justification,  or 
even  a  merit,  in  a  pretended  waiting  submission 
to  the  decrees  of  Heaven. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  129 

OTHER    OBSTRUCTIONS    TO    MISSIONS. 

Many  causes  of  a  nature  not  implicated 
with  these  ohscure  speculations,  are  operating 
to  prevent  or  lessen  the  assistance  to  an  en- 
terprise like  that  for  which  we  are  pleading. 
We  may  briefly  notice  one  or  two. 

If  we  just  name  Party-spirit,  it  is  not  in 
order  to  indulge  in  any  accusatory  complaints 
that  our  particular  undertaking  has  materially 
suffered  by  it.  Doubtless  we  may  be  some- 
what the  worse  for  it ;  but  we  have  as  little 
the  inclination  as  the  means  for  calculating^ 
how  much.  And  even  were  a  calculation 
made  and  verified  of  that  proportion  of  pecu- 
niary and  other  modes  of  aid  which  a  perfect 
Christian  liberality  would  have  avv  arded  to  this 
project,  and  which  party  spirit  may  have  with- 
held from  it,  we  should  still  be  gratified  in  the 
persuasion  that  the  greater  part  of  what  may 
have  been  so  averted,  has  probably  been  de- 
voted to  other  excellent  designs  to  which  we 
wish  all  possible  success.  The  history  of  this 
portion  of  the  general  Christian  operations  of 
the   age,  will  have  little  to  say  of  convoys 


130  THE  GLORY  OF  THE   AGE, 

intercepted  by  selfish  allies.  We  are  too  con- 
fident of  the  prolonged  favour  of  Providence 
on  our  work,  and  too  much  pleased  at  seeing  that 
Providence  favouring  the  exertions  of  the  same 
tendency  made  by  other  sects  of  the  Christian 
community,  to  regret  not  having  obtained  any 
one  particle  of  the  means  which  have  availed 
to  good  in  their  hands.  And  we  think  we 
have  too  systematically  avoided  giving  any  just 
cause  of  jealous  re-action  to  our  friends  of  the 
other  denominations,  to  be  debarred  in  modesty 
from  denouncing,  with  unrestrained  censure, 
the  spirit  which  cannot  see  the  merit  of  a  noble 
object,  when  there  is  some  point  of  controversy 
with  its  promoters,  and  which  would  almost 
rather  wish  it  might  be  lost,  than  aid  them  to 
attain  it :  a  spirit  which,  in  promoting  an  in- 
terest professedly  as  wide  as  the  world,  as 
liberal  as  the  sun,  would  enviously  account 
success,  or  the  means  of  success,  conferred  on 
a  different  class  of  labourers  in  the  same  gen- 
eral cause,  so  much  unjustly  subtracted  from 
our  own  connexion  and  project;  and  would 
avenge  on  the  grand,  catholic  object,  the  petty 
offences  of  party,  or  affronts  to  individual  vanity. 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  131 

If  the  Christian  communities,  most  hable  to 
feelings  of  competition,  were  asked  in  what 
character  they  conceive  themselves  to  stand 
the  most  prominently  forward  before  the  world, 
as  practically  verifying  the  exalted,  beneficent, 
expansive  spirit  of  their  religion,  it  is  not  im- 
probable they  would  say,  it  is  as  conspirers  to 
extend  heavenly  light  and  liberty  over  the 
heathen  world.  But  if  so,  how  justly  we  may 
urge  it  upon  them  to  beware  of  degrading  this 
the  most  magnificent  form  in  which  their  pro- 
fession is  displayed,  by  associating  with  it  little- 
nesses, which  may  make  it  almost  ridiculous. 
Surely,  in  thus  going  forth  against  the  powers 
of  darkness,  they  would  not  be  found  stickling 
and  stipulating  that  the  grand  banner  of  the 
cause  should  be  surmounted  with  some  petty 
label  of  a  particular  denomination.  Such 
mortals,  had  they  been  in  the  emigration  from 
Egypt,  would  have  been  incessantly  and  jeal- 
ously busy  about  the  relative  proximities  of 
the  tribes  to  the  cloudy  pillar.  A  shrewd, 
irreligious  looker-on,  who  can  divert  himself  at 
the  expense  of  all  our  sects,  and  despises  this 
their  common  object,  might  indulge  his  mali- 


132  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

cious  gaiety  in  saying,  All  this  bustling  acti\ity 
of  consultation,  and  oratory,  and  subscription, 
and  travelling,  is  to  go  to  the  account,  as  you 
will  have  it,  of  a  fervent  zeal  for  Christianity  : 
what  a  large  share  of  this  costly  trouble  I 
should  nevertheless  be  sure  to  save  you,  if  I 
could  just  apply  a  quenching  substance  to  so 
much  of  this  pious  heat  as  consists  of  sectarian 
ambition  and  rivalry. 

We  cannot  too  strongly  insist  again,  that  a 
sense  of  dignity  should  spurn  these  inglorious 
competitions  from  the  sections  of  the  advanced 
camp  against  the  grand  enemy.  Hei-e,  at  all 
events,  the  parties  should  acknowledge  the 
Tmce  of  God.  If  they  have,  and  must  have, 
jealousies  too  sacred  to  be  extinguished,  let 
their  indulgence  be  reserved  for  occasions  and 
scenes  in  which  they  are  not  assuming  the 
lofty  attitude  of  a  war  against  the  gods.  But 
the  great  matter,  after  all,  is  to  be  solemnly 
intent  on  the  object  itself,  on  the  good  to  be 
done,  compared  with  which,  the  denomination 
of  the  instrument  will  apj)ear  a  circumstance 
vastly  trivial.  Let  all  the  promoters  of  these 
good  works  be  in  this  state  of  mind,  and  then 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  133 

the  modes  in  which  the  evil  spirit  in  question 
might  display  itself  will  be  things  only  to  be 
figured  in  the  imagination,  or  sought  as  facts 
in  the  history  of  former  and  worse  times.  For 
then  we  shall  never  actually  see  a  disposition 
to  discountenance  a  design  on  account  of  its 
originating  with  an  alien  sect,  rather  than  to 
favour  it  for  its  intrinsic  excellence ;  nor  an 
eager  insisting  on  points  of  precedence  ;  nor  a 
systematic  practice  of  representing  the  opera- 
tions of  our  own  sect  at  their  highest  amount 
of  ability  and  effect,  and  those  of  another  at 
their  lowest ;  nor  the  studied  silence  of  vexed* 
jealousy,  which  is  thinking  all  the  while  of 
w^hat  it  cannot  endure  to  name  ;  nor  that  la- 
boured exaggeration  of  our  magnitude  and 
achievements,  which  most  plainly  tells  ivhat 
that  jealousy  is  thinking  of;  nor  that  manner 
of  hearing  of  marked  and  opportune  advantages 
occurrins;  to  undertakinos  of  another  sect  w^hich 
betrays  that  a  story  of  disasters  would  have 
been  more  w^elcome  ;  nor  underhand  contri- 
vances for  assuming  the  envied  merit  of  some- 
thing which  another  sect  has  accomplished  and 
never  boasted  of;  nor  excitements  to  exertion 


134  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

expressly  on  the  ground  of  invidious  rivalry, 
rather  than  Christian  emulation  ;  nor  casual 
defects  of  courtesy  interpreted  wilfully  into 
intentional  hostility,  just  to  give  a  colour  of 
justice  to  actual  hostility  on  our  part,  for  which 
we  were  prepared,  and  but  watching  for  a 
pretext ;  nor  management  and  misrepresenta- 
tion to  trepan  to  our  party  auxiliary  means 
which  might  have  been  intended  for  theirs. 

While  we  would  earnestly  admonish  all  the 
promoters  of  our  object  to  display  an  example 
in  every  point  the  reverse  of  such  tempers  and 
expedients,  we  will  assure  ourselves  of  the  fa- 
vourable dispositions  of  Christians  in  general 
towards  a  design  which  has  its  own  sphere  of 
operations,  in  which  it  has  both  the  happiness 
and  the  merit  of  interfering  wuth  no  other.  It 
has  not,  by  either  interference  or  ostentation, 
given  any  provocation  to  party  jealousy ;  and 
we  may  add,  that  it  is  grown  to  a  strength  and 
an  establishment  beyond  the  power  of  that 
unfriendly  spirit,  were  it  excited,  greatly  to 
injure. 

When  we  mention  the  Love  of  Money,  as 
another  chief  prevention  of  the  required  assist- 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  135 

ance  to  our  cause,  we  may  seem  to  be  naming 
a  thing  not  more  specifically  adverse  to  this 
than  to  any  and  every  other  beneficent  design. 
A  second  thought,  however,  may  suggest  to 
you  a  certain  peculiarity  of  circumstance  in  the 
resistance  of  this  bad  passion  to  the  claims  of 
a  scheme  for  converting  heathens.  By  emi- 
nence among  the  vices  which  may  prevail 
where  the  tme  God  is  not  unknown,  this  of 
covetousness  is  denominated  in  the  word  of 
that  God,  Idolatry.  Now  as  it  is  peculiarly 
against  idolatry  that  the  design  in  question  is 
aimed,  the  repugnance  shown  to  it  by  covet- 
ousness may  be  considered  as  on  the  principle 
of  an  identity  of  nature  with  its  enemy.  One 
idolater  seems  to  take  up  the  interest  of  all 
idolaters,  as  if  desirous  to  profit  by  the  warning, 
that  if  Satan  be  divided  against  himself,  his 
kingdom  cannot  stand. 

Or  rather  it  is  instinctively  that  this  commu- 
nity of  interest  is  maintained,  and  without  being 
fully  aware ;  for  the  unhappy  mortal,  while 
reading  or  hearing  how  millions  of  people 
adore  shapes  of  clay,  or  wood,  or  stone,  or 
metal,  of  silver  or  gold,  shall  express  his  won- 


136  THE  GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

der  how  rational  creatures  can  be  so  besotted ; 
shall  raise  his  eyes  to  heaven  in  astonishment 
that  the  Ahiiighty  should  permit  such  aliena- 
tion of  understandin.<T,  such  dominion  of  the 
wicked  Spirit :  and  there  is  no  voice  to  speak 
in  alarm  to  his  conscience,  Thou  art  the  man ! 
As  this  unhappy  man  may  very  possibly  be 
a  frequenter  of  our  religious  assemblies,  and 
even  a  pretender  to  personal  rehgion,  he  is 
solicited,  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ,  to  bring 
forth  something  from  his  store  in  aid  of  the 
good  cause.  He  refuses,  perhaps  ;  or,  much 
more  probably,  just  saves  the  appearance  and 
irksomeness  of  formally  doing  that,  by  contrib- 
uting what  is  immeasurably  below  all  fair  pro- 
portion to  his  means  ;  what  is  in  such  dispro- 
portion to  them,  that  a  general  standard  taken 
from  it  would  reduce  the  contributions  of  very 
many  other  persons  to  a  fraction  of  the  smahest 
denomination  of  our  money,  and  would  very 
shoitly  break  up  the  mechanism  of  human 
operation  for  prosecuting  a  generous  design, 
throwing  it  directly  on  Providence  and  miracle, 
with  a  benediction  perhaps  uttered  by  this 
man,  (for  he  will  be  as  liberal  of  cant  as  par- 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  137 

simonious  of  gold,)  on  the  ail-sufficiency  of 
that  last  resource  :  Yes,  God  shall  have  the 
glory  of  the  salvation  of  the  heathens,  while 
he  is  happy  to  have  secured  the  more  impor- 
tant point, — the  saving  of  his  money. 

How  much  it  were  to  be  wished,  that  the 
fatuity  which  this  vice  inflicts  on  the  faculty 
which  should  judge  it,  (herein  bearing  one  of 
the  most  striking  characteristics  of  idolatry,) 
did  not  disable  the  man  to  take  an  honest  ac- 
count of  the  manner  in  which  it  has  its  strong 
hold  on  his  mind.  If,  when  his  eyes  and 
thoughts  are  fixed  upon  this  pelf,  regarded  as 
brought  into  the  question  of  going  to  promote 
the  worship  of  God  in  Asia,  or  staying  to  be 
itself  worshipped,  he  could  clearly  feel  that  he 
detains  it  from  fervent  affection  to  it  as  an  ab- 
solute good,  he  would  be  smitten  with  horror 
to  find  his  soul  making  such  an  object  its  su- 
preme good — for  supreme  it  plainly  is,  w^hen 
thus  preferred  to  the  cause  of  God,  and  there- 
fore to  God  himself. 

But  perhaps  he  thinks  his  motive  regards 
the  prospects  of  his  family.  Perhaps  he  has 
a  favourite  or  "an  only  son,  for  whom  he  des- 
16 


138  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

tines,  with  the  rest  of  his  treasure,  that  portion 
which  God  is  demanding.  In  due  time  that 
son  will  be  put  in  possession  by  his  father's 
death,  and  will  be  so  much  the  richer  for  that 
portion.  That  this  wealth  will  remain  long 
in  his  hands,  a  prosperous  and  undiminished 
possession,  may  not  seem  very  probable,  when 
we  recollect  what  has  been  seen  of  the  heirs 
of  misers.  But  let  us  suppose  that  it  will,  and 
suppose,  too,  that  this  son  will  be  a  man  of 
sensibility  and  deep  reflection.  Then,  his 
property  will  often  remind  him  of  his  departed 
father.  And  with  what  emotions  ?  This,  he 
will  say  to  himself,  was  my  father's  god.  He 
did,  indeed,  think  much  of  me,  and  of  securing 
for  me  an  advantageous  condition  in  life  ;  and 
I  am  not  ungrateful  for  his  cares.  He  pro- 
fessed also  not  to  be  unconcerned  for  the  m- 
terests  of  his  own  soul,  and  the  cause  of  the 
Saviour  of  the  world.  But,  alas  !  it  presses 
on  me  with  irresistible  evidence,  that  the  love 
of  money  had  a  power  in  his  heart  predominant 
over  all  other  interests.  It  cannot  be  effaced 
from  my  memory  that  I  have  often  observed 
the  strong  marks  of  repugnance  and  impatience, 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  139 

an  ingenuity  of  evasion,  an  acuteness  to  dis- 
cover or  invent  objections  to  the  matter  pro- 
posed to  liim,  however  high  its  claims,  if  those 
claims  sought  to  touch  his  money,  which  he 
contemplated,  and  guarded,  and  augmented, 
with  a  devotedness  of  soul  quite  religious. 
But  whither  can  a  soul  be  gone,  that  had  such 
a  religion  ?  Would  he  that  acquired,  and 
guarded  even  against  the  demands  of  God, 
these  possessions  for  me,  and  who  is  thinking 
of  them  now  as  certainly  as  I  am  thinking  of 
them,  O  would  he,  if  he  could  speak  to  me 
while  I  am  pleasing  myself  that  they  are  mine, 
tell  me  tliat  they  are  the  price  of  my  father's 
soul  ? 

If  the  rich  man  in  the  parable,  (that  parable 
being  regarded  for  a  moment  as  literal  fact,) 
might  have  been  permitted  to  send  a  message 
to  his  relatives  on  earth,  what  might  we  imag- 
ine as  the  first  thing  v\'hich  the  anguish  of  his 
spirit  would  have  uttered  in  such  a  message  ? 
Would  it  not  have  been  an  emphatic  expres- 
sion of  the  suffering  which  the  wealth  he  had 
adored  inflicted  on  him  now,  as  if  it  ministered 
incessant  fuel  to  those  fires  ?     Would  he  not 


140  THE   GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

have  breathed  out  an  earnest  entreaty  that  it 
might  not  remain  in  that  entireness  in  which  it 
has  been  his  idol ;  as  if  an  alleviation  might  in 
some  way  arise  from  its  being  in  any  other 
state  and  use  than  that  in  which  he  had  sacri- 
ficed his  soul  to  it  ?  Send  away  some  of  that 
accumulation  ;  give  some  of  it  to  the  cause  of 
God,  if  he  will  accept  what  has  been  made  an 
abomination  by  being  put  in  his  stead.  Send 
some  of  it  away,  if  it  be  but  in  pity  to  him  of 
whom  you  surely  cannot  help  sometimes  think- 
ing while  you  are  enjoying  it.  Can  you,  in 
the  pleasures  and  the  pride  which  that  wealth 
may  impart,  escape  the  bitter  thought,  that  for 
every  gratification  which  it  administers  to  you, 
it  inflicts  an  unutterable  pang  on  him  by  whose 
death  it  has  become  yours,  and  by  whose  per- 
dition it  is  so  much. 

How  different  the  reflections  of  those  inher- 
itors, who  feel  in  what  they  do  not  possess  a 
delightful  recognition  of  the  character  of  their 
departed  relatives  ;  wdio  feel  that  they  possess 
so  much  the  less  than  they  might  have  done, 
because  those  relatives  have  alienated  to  them 
nothing  of  what  was  sacred  to  God,  and  to 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  141 

chaiity  ;  and  who  can  comprehend  and  ap- 
prove the  principle  of  that  calculation  of  their 
pious  predecessors,  which  accounted  it  even 
one  of  the  best  provisions  for  their  heirs  to 
dedicate  a  portion  of  their  property  to  God. 
How  different  therefore  the  feelings  of  a  de- 
scendant of  such  a  pei-son  as  that  late  most 
excellent  Christian  and  philanthropist  of  your 
city,  whose  name*  the  present  topic  has  prob- 
ably recalled  to  the  minds  of  most  in  this 
assembly. 

We  cannot  be  unaware  how  many  well- 
wishers  to  our  cause  must  feel  a  severe  limita- 
tion put  upon  their  means  of  aiding  it  by  the 
pressure  of  the  public  burdens,  those  burdens 
which  oppress  the  energy  and  resources  of 
every  scheme  for  doing  good.  How  often 
does  the  thought  of  such  designs  present  itself 
to  a  benevolent  man,  at  the  moment  of  his 
being  accosted  with  the  peremptory  demands 
on  the  public  account,  and  make  him  look 
wishfully  and  regretfully  at  the  sums  he  is  thus 
surrendering,  to  be  speedily  followed,  he  knows, 
by  more  sums  surrendered,  from  the  profits  of 

*  Reynolds. 


142  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

his  laborious  industry,  or  the  produce  of  liis 
little  property.  How  many  implements  for 
the  holy  war,  he  says  to  himself,  how  many 
bibles,  or  tracts,  or  school-manuals,  in  the  lan- 
guages of  Asia,  might  have  sprung  from  such 
sums ;  but  this  all-consuming  body  politic 
seems  to  know  instinctively  whatever  good 
men  are  devising  of  gratuitous  service  to  the 
welfare  of  their  fellow  creatures,  and  to  take  a 
pleasure  in  frustrating  their  designs,  by  coming 
upon  their  means  as  a  spoil, — as  if  in  revenge 
that  they  should  seem  to  reproach  the  nation, 
by  presuming  to  apply  their  little  individual 
means  to  worthier  purposes  than  those  on 
which  the  grand  public  resources  have  been 
expended  without  limit. 

It  is  indeed  a  melancholy  and  awful  view 
that  is  presented  to  our  contemplation.  A 
great,  Christian  state,  with  every  conceivable 
mode  of  beneficence  placed  within  its  sight 
and  within  its  powers,  has,  throughout  half  an 
age,  been  stimulated  to  almost  miraculous  ex- 
ertions, to  an  expenditure  surpassing  all  the 
dreams  of  the  golden  empires  of  romance,  a 
consumption  of  forces  and  of  materials  which 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  143 

might  seem  to  have  been  adequate,  under 
some  imaginable  forms  of  application,  to  give 
a  new  character  to  the  moral  world  ;  and  when, 
after  all  this,  the  Christian  philanthropist  looks 
on  the  scene  for  the  results,  he  finds  that,  ex- 
cepting some  hopeful  commencements,  made 
quite  apart  from  the  public  system,  and  in  spite 
of  its  insatiable  requisitions,  that  which  was  to 
be  done,  remains  still  to  be  done,  with  a  fright- 
ful addition  of  evils  to  the  account ;  and  to  be 
done  by  the  eftbrts  of  individuals,  and  those 
individuals  suffering,  from  the  course  of  nation- 
al affairs,  a  lamentable  diminution  and  aliena- 
tion of  their  means. 

In  any  large  assembly,  nevertheless,  there 
may  be  a  considerable  number  of  persons  who 
have  mainly  approved  that  public  course  of 
things,  of  which  they  would  plead  the  now 
oppressive  consequences  in  excuse  for  contrib- 
uting but  slightly  in  aid  of  a  concern  like  that 
under  our  contemplation.  We  are  not  taking 
upon  us  to  arraign  them  for  such  approval, 
when  we  suggest  that  they  should  be  discreet 
in  using  this  plea.  They  should  think  again, 
before  consequences  which,  as  resulting  natur- 


144  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

ally  from  a  cenain  order  of  public  measureSy 
they  were  required  in  reason  to  foresee,  at 
least  to  a  considerable  extent,  when  they  de- 
liberately gave  their  approbation  to  those 
measures,  shall  be  alleged  by  them  in  exemp- 
tion from  assisting  a  work  as  evidently  designed 
to  promote  the  highest  good  as  any  undertak- 
ing in  the  history  of  the  world.  If  they  have 
been  the  professed  servants  of  that  Prince  of 
Peace  w"hose  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world,  but 
nevertheless  demands  tribute  from  the  worldly 
resources  of  its  subjects,  it  must  have  been 
then'  acknowledged  primary  obligation  to  look 
to  the  advancement  of  that  kingdom,  as  indeed 
they  were  admonished  in  the  first  petition  of 
the  prayer  dictated  to  them  in  his  own  instruc- 
tions. This  sacred  obligation  they  had  to 
keep  in  memory,  while  considering  what  other 
expenditures  of  their  property  they  should 
take  the  responsibility  of  approving  :  the  re- 
sponsibility, we  say  ;  for,  to  abet  and  sanction 
a  proceeding,  is  to  incur  the  accountableness  as 
completely  as  if  the  manifestation  of  an  oppo- 
site opinion  would  prevent  that  proceeding  ; 
and  it  were  an  idle  evasion  to  plead  that  the 


OR   THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  145 

course  of  measures  in  question  would  have 
been  pursued,  all  the  same,  though  disappro- 
bation instead  of  coincidence  had  been  avowed 
by  these  individuals.  With  this  obligation 
resting  on  memory  and  on  conscience,  they 
could  not,  one  should  think,  without  alarm  for 
their  Christian  principles,  give  their  sanction 
to  what  must  inevitably  create  speedy  and 
large  demands  on  their  property,  unless  they 
had  very  solid  ground  for  assurance  of  being 
left  still  competent  to  meet  the  claims  pecu- 
liarly authoritative  on  them  as  Christians. 
They  had  to  consider  then  what,  in  sober  cal- 
culation, it  was  probable  or  possible  there 
should  at  length  be  spared  to  them,  by  the 
voracity  of  such  an  enormous  gulf  as  they  saw 
swallowing  up,  year  after  year,  the  means  of 
the  community.  We  will  presume  that  they 
did,  as  a  matter  of  conscience,  solemnly  con- 
sider this  question,  and  that  through  the  pro- 
gressive stages  of  experience  they  were  still 
satisfied,  as  remaining  constant  in  the  assurance 
that  their  approval  of  the  policy  which  caused 
such  a  tremendous  consumption,  did  not  in- 
volve their  consent  to  an  alienation  from  the 
IT 


146  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

cause  of  Christ,  of  any  thing  honestly  belong- 
ing to  it.  Bat  then  we  must  tell  them,  that 
they  will  now  come  with  a  very  bad  grace  to 
say  that  they  have  been  deceived,  and  that 
the  cause  of  Christ  must  pay  the  forfeit  of  their 
miscalculation.  Surely  against  the  claims  of 
a  service  to  which  their  best  strength  was  put 
vmder  the  prior  and  paramount  obligation  ac- 
knowledged by  their  profession,  they  will  hes- 
itate to  plead  that  they  have  been  lamed  in 
their  willing  adherence  to  another,  of  such 
widely  different  character. 

To  those  who  are  not  liable  to  this  sort  of 
argumentum  ad  hominem,  while  deploring  the 
disability  inflicted  by  the  consequences  of  na- 
tional conduct,  it  may  be  suggested  as  at  once 
a  consolation  and  incitement,  that  by  far  the 
most  unequiv^ocal  omen  of  an  amendment  of 
the  national  condition,  even  in  a  temporal 
respect,  is  the  very  circumstance  of  this  re- 
cently arisen  zeal  and  activity  for  extending 
the  prevalence  of  the  true  religion  in  the  world. 
From  what  has  been  seen  thus  far,  w^e  may 
affirm,  that  the  Almighty  has  clearly  indicated 
this  as  the  pait  of  the  world  from  which  he  is 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  147 

determined  to  draw  the  chief  human  means  of 
accomplishing  his  most  glorious  designs  rela- 
tively to  it  all ;  that  here  he  has  his  mines, 
and  his  assembling  camp,  that  here  is  the  part 
where  lie  the  sinews  of  the  holy  war.  But  if 
so,  and  if  that  war  is  to  be  on  so  great  a  scale 
as  appears  to  be  prefigured  in  the  visions  of 
his  prophets,  may  we  not  venture  to  say  that 
he  will,  that  he  must,  protect  the  stores,  appli- 
cable to  his  approaching  campaigns,  from  the 
renewal  of  such  dreadful  depredations  as  we 
have  witnessed,  and  from  the  unmitigated  con- 
tinuance of  such  as  are  suffered  now  ?  We 
may  assure  ourselves  that  he  will  in  due  time 
warn  off  the  sacrilegious  hands  that  would  seek 
to  plunder  a  property  appointed  to  so  sacred  a 
service.  And  what  a  glorious  change  of  the 
national  condition,  when  God  shall,  as  it  were, 
place  his  angel  between  what  shall  remain  after 
all  the  ravage  of  ambition,  war,  and  corruption, 
and  the  re-approach  of  these  spoilers.  And 
how  gratifying  to  behold  too,  in  the  contrasted 
operations,  the  difference  of  the  power  of  pro- 
ducing an  effect ;  to  see  that,  whereas  an 
astonishing  and  unparalleled  expenditure  in  the 


148  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

vulcjar  kind  of  war  has  resulted  in,  —  leavino^ 
men,  relatively  to  the  objects  of  that  war, 
nearly  where  they  were,  —  the  grand  spiritual 
power,  which  we  behold  entering  into  action, 
will  require  an  incalculably  less  portion  of  ma- 
terial means  for  its  consumption  in  an  operation 
by  which  it  is  to  transform  the  moral  world. 

You  will  not,  my  brethren,  feel  it  a  damp 
upon  the  pleasure  of  anticipating  this  rescue 
from  the  spoilers,  that  the  temporal  means  so 
redeemed  will  still  not  be  held  in  entire  and 
absolute  property  by  their  possessors,  but  will 
still  be  in  part  under  a  foreign  and  authoritative 
claim.  For,  besides,  that  it  is  pleasing  to 
devout  minds  to  hold  and  regard  all  things  as 
belonging  to  God,  and  as  to  subserve  Avhatever 
purpose  he  pleases,  they  may  be  very  confident 
that  he  will  make  it  to  be  the  better  for  the 
community  itself,  in  a  temporal  respect,  when- 
ever there  shall  prevail  in  it  a  disposition  to 
apply  its  means  to  promote  his  cause.  Indeed 
this  very  spirit  will  involve  a  principle  of 
counteraction  to  all  such  things  as  we  have 
seen  most  miserably  destroying  the  temporal 
w  elfare  of  the  nation. 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  149 

For  the  present,  while  many  friends  of  reli- 
gion are  labouring  under  the  grievous  pressure, 
we  may  suggest  it  to  them  as  a  consideration 
not  unfit  to  accompany  that  prudence  with 
which  their  conduct  is  to  be  left  in  charge,  that 
the  offerings  to  God  from  what  calamity  has 
left  have  a  pecuhar  value  in  his  esteem,  and 
in  the  feelings  of  the  sufferer  may  contribute 
to  exalt  adversity  into  piety.  Should  we  go 
back  in  thought  to  that  period  of  the  world 
when  sacrifices,  literally,  were  appointed  for 
the  expression  of  homage  to  Heaven,  we  might 
imagine  the  case  of  a  devout  man  whose  corn- 
fields, or  plantations,  or  flocks,  had  for  the 
greater  part  perished  by  some  destructive  vis- 
itation, as  by  tempests,  or  fire,  or  locusts,  or 
disease.  Let  us  suppose  him,  nevertheless,  in 
looking  pensively  over  the  scene,  to  consider 
whether  yet  some  small  portion  of  the  remain- 
der might  not  be  spared  for  God,  as  a  token 
of  humble  resio^nation  to  him  that  "-S-ve  and 
had  taken  away.  Would  not  that  probably 
be  the  most  acceptable  sacrifice  that  had  ever 
burnt  on  his  altar,  and  offered  with  the  most 
affecting  emotions  of  religion  ?     Nor  would  it 


l50  THE   GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

seem  to  him  to  lessen  what  was  already  so 
little,  but  rather  to  augment  it  in  value  by 
bringing  a  divine  benediction  upon  it.  Or 
suppose  a  pious  man,  in  that  ancient  time,  to 
have  been  cast,  by  shipwreck,  alone,  on  a 
desert  coast.  If  his  religion,  predominant  in 
all  scenes  and  over  all  feelings,  inspired  the 
wish  to  make  a  burnt-offering  to  his  God,  his 
only  means  might  have  been  a  little  provision 
saved  from  the  wreck,  and  fragments  of  his 
ship  for  fuel.  But  in  the  solemnity  of  bearing 
toward  heaven  the  expression  of  a  sublime  de- 
votion, this  would  surpass  all  other  sacrificial 
flames  he  had  ever  kindled  or  beheld.  It 
might  appear  to  his  faith,  amidst  the  gloom  of 
the  solitary  shore,  as  a  symbol  of  that  presence 
which  was  in  the  fire  that  IVIoses  saw  in  the 
desert. 

ENCOURAGEMENTS    TO    PERSEVERANCE. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  justly  thought,  that  the 
notions,  dispositions,  and  circumstances,  above 
recounted  as  adverse  to  the  spirit  for  Chris- 
tianizing the  heathens,  and  as  causing  a  refusal 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  151 

of  the   desired  assistance   to  an  undertaking 

o 

which  is  with  that  design  in  actual  operation 
among  them,  did  not  require  to  be  commented 
on  at  such  length.  We  gladly  leave  them  to 
lose  their  power  of  counteraction  under  the 
progressive  ascendency  of  unfettered  thinking, 
experience,  benevolent  zeal,  and  that  better 
aspect  which  we  hope  that  a  good  Providence 
will  ere  long  give  to  the  times,  if  it  were  only 
for  the  purpose  of  replenishing  the  resources 
of  schemes  for  extending  the  dominion  of  di- 
vine truth.  We  shall  hasten  toward  a  conclu- 
sion, by  briefly  suggesting  a  few  ideas  tending 
to  animate  the  piety  of  persons  already  inclined 
in  this  way  to  "  come  to  the  help  of  the  Lord." 
And  surely  there  is  something  very  captiva- 
ting in  such  an  expression  itself,  combined 
with  numerous  sentences  in  the  Bible,  less 
bold  and  striking  in  phrase,  but  of  the  same 
spirit.  It  is  strange  that  we  are  not  oftener 
surprised  and  delighted  at  the  condescension 
shown  by  the  Almighty,  in  expressing  the 
dictates  of  his  will  to  his  servants  in  terms  and 
images  which  permit  them  to  regard  the  per- 
fprmance  of  their  duty,  their  mere  duty,  in  the 


152  THE  GLORY  OF  THE   AGE, 

light  of  co-operation  with  him.  The  thought 
of  being  authorised  by  him  to  entertain  so 
subhme  an  idea  of  their  vocation,  might  bear 
them  up  in  their  deepest  distresses  and  severest 
labours  ;  might  animate  them,  though  a  world 
were  against  them.  So  ennobled  a  character 
of  their  service,  however,  which  it  would  have 
been  profaneness  for  them  to  have  arrogated 
without  such  a  sanction,  is  fit  to  be  dwelt  upon 
in  its  full  magnitude  only  when  their  minds  are 
the  most  elevated  in  devotion,  when  conse- 
quently their  humility  is  the  most  profound. 
In  the  usual  tenour  of  their  religious  feelings, 
it  should  be  honour  enough  to  inspire  compla- 
cency and  activity  in  their  work,  that  they  can 
regard  themselves  in  the  humbler  capacity  of 
instruments  ;  that  the  Supreme  Agent  chooses 
to  efiect  by  means  of  them,  what  he  could  ac- 
complish with  infinite  facility  without  them. 

Apply  the  consideration  to  the  matter  now 
before  us.  He  could  by  a  mere  act  of  his  will 
cause  an  instantaneous  disappearance  from  the 
globe  of  that  enormous  system  of  mythological 
delusion,  with  all  its  rites,  iniquities,  and  guar- 
dian evil  spirits.    It  might  vanish  like  a  vapour 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  ]53 

of  the  morning,  and  leave  but  its  \vreck  and 
monument  in  fallen  temples  and  shivered  idols, 
thenceforth  a  harmless  mass  of  matter,  dispos- 
sessed of  that  property  which  had  breathed 
poison  into  men's  souls.  And  indeed,  if  we 
were  regarding  the  extermination  of  that  mon- 
strous superstition  in  no  other  view  than  that 
of  the  advantage  of  its  being  the  soonest  out  of 
existence,  we  might  almost  be  tempted  to  de- 
sire so  illustrious  a  catastrophe.  If  such  a 
thing  might  be,  a  servant  of  God  would  be 
\\illing  to  forego  the  honour  of  his  share  in  the 
destruction.  But  when  he  finds  it  so  evident 
that,  in  the  divine  plans,  it  is  not  the  sole  ob- 
ject to  attain  the  one  last  efiect,  but  that  they 
are  condescendingly  formed  in  such  a  manner 
that  their  execution  shall  be  an  employment, 
a  discipline,  and  an  honour,  to  human  agents, 
he  will  feel,  (if  his  spirit  is  attempered  to  the 
great  purposes  of  his  Master.)  a  generous  im- 
patience that  these  agents  may  be  prompt  to 
seize  the  honour  thus  brought  within  their 
reach.  With  fire-brands  and  torches  put  into 
their  hands,  can  they  be  content,  he  exclaims, 
to  stand  still  and  let  them  bum  out,  while  the 


154  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

huge  fabric  inhabited  by  demon  gods,  and  filled 
with  pestilent  abominations,  spreads  wide  and 
towers  aloft  in  pride  and  security  before  them  ? 
Let  them  advance  and  prove  who  has  sent 
them,  and  whence  the  fire  came  that  they  bear. 
Let  them  go  and  demonstrate  upon  the  proud 
assemblage  of  possessors  of  a  region  not  their 
own,  that  the  decree  of  expulsion  coming  upon 
them  at  last  is  not  to  be  defied  because  He, 
whose  own  approach  when  on  earth  was  al- 
ways the  imperative  signal  for  infernal  audacity 
to  retire,  seems  now  only  to  send  his  servants 
to  execute  his  will.  That  his  will  should  pass 
into  effect  through  such  an  agency,  may  well 
excite  the  wonder  of  those  who  find  such  a 
commission  offered  to  them.  It  must  be  the 
highest  distinction  which  he  has  to  confer  on 
mortals,  thus  to  summon  them  forth,  in  the 
sight  of  far  nobler,  mightier  intelligences,  to  so 
great  a  work  for  the  enlargement  of  his  king- 
dom. It  will  also  be  a  religious  triumph  as 
against  the  principalities  and  powers  of  evil, 
that  it  should  please  him  to  accomplish  his 
victory  by  the  means  of  creatures  who,  in  thus 
serving  their  God,  should  be   avenging  their 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  155 

race  ;  that  these  powers  should  see,  that  when 
the  irresistible  might  w^as  at  last  to  be  put  forth, 
it  was  to  be  through  the  instrumentality  of  be- 
ings of  that  order  which  they  had  so  long  de- 
spised, and  tyrannized  over,  and  tormented. 

It  is  stin  further  cause  of  delight,  that  this 
putting  forth  of  strength  under  the  external 
form  of  w^eakness,  is  analogous  to  the  one 
greatest  manifestation  of  vindicating  and  re- 
deeming energy. 

As  an  incitement  to  Christians  to  throw  a 
measure  of  their  activity  into  enterprises  aimed 
at  such  an  object,  they  may  be  reminded  that, 
while  enjoined  to  preserve  moderation  in  their 
own  demands  upon  this  earth,  they  are  entitled 
to  be  ambitious,  shall  we  not  say  arrogant,  on 
behalf  of  their  Lord.  In  their  view,  the  worst 
usurpation  beyond  all  comparison,  in  the  world, 
must  be  that  which  any  where  presumes  to 
withhold  an  inhabited  tract  from  his  actual 
dominion.  On  w^hatever  It  is  that  does  so 
presume,  let  them  expend  the  animosity  which 
might  otherwise  find  its  meaner  exercise  against 
the  boundaries  that  obstruct  their  own  projects 
of  acquisition.     And  in  this  nobler  direction  it 


156  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

will  not  be  the  passion  which  frets  itself  against 
what  is  unalterable,  and  despairs.  For  they 
have  reason  to  be  assured  that  those  limits, 
against  which  this  more  consecrated  ambition 
is  impelled  in  hostility,  will  at  length  be  car- 
ried away.  They  can  descry  through  the 
gross  darkness  that  covers  the  pagan  regions, 
a  mystical  signature  by  the  finger  of  God,  on 
every  spot,  to  indicate  its  assignment  by  that 
covenant,  which  has  given  to  the  Messiah  the 
heathen  for  his  inheritance,  and  the  uttermost 
parts  of  the  earth  for  his  possession.  That 
declared  decree  in  heaven,  that  substance  of 
the  thing  hoped  for,  is  brought  down  to  the 
earth  in  the  confident  anticipations  of  the 
faithful,  and  beheld  as  In  the  fact  of  an  univer- 
sal kingdom. 

They  see  among  leading  mortals  an  ardent 
competition  for  dominion  over  spaces  of  terri- 
tory, with  angry  controversy  about  titles  and 
usurpations,  and  an  incessant  resort  to  the  ex- 
pedient, which  wastes  the  contenders  and  the 
subject  of  contention.  They  loathe  and  abhor 
this  spectacle  of  a  world  with  its  unnumbered 
myriads,  continually  made  a  sport  and  a  prey 


OR  THE  SPIRIT   OF   iMISSIOAS.  157 

of  the  bad  passions  of  those  predommant  mor- 
tals, by  their  power  of  exasperating  and  di- 
recting the  bad  propensities  of  subservient 
multitudes.  The  contemplators  of  the  scene, 
if  they  beheved  it  must  be  always  thus,  might 
well  be  affected  with  passionate  longings  for 
omens  of  its  approaching  dissolution.  An 
oracle  that  should  tell  them,  in  the  plainest 
meaning  of  the  words,  that  "  the  end  of  all 
thino^s  is  at  hand,"  midit  deliu;ht  them  more 
than  ever  a  pagan  mover  of  an  ambitious  en- 
terprise was  elated  by  voices  or  signs  from  the 
fane  of  his  deity  assuring  him  of  conquest. 
But  they  have  a  better  consolation  in  the  faith, 
that  amidst  all  these  tumults  of  conflict,  amidst 
all  these  destructive  competitions  of  transitory 
potentates,  there  is  gradually  unfolding  itself  a 
cause  destined  to  grow  to  a  dominion  which 
will  leave  no  province  nor  tribe  of  the  earth  to 
be  contested  by  the  rivalries  of  an  insane  am- 
bition. 

In  the  mean  time,  if  they  observe  any  state 
making  a  great  progress  in  power  and  occu- 
pancy on  the  face  of  the  world,  it  will  ^^ell 
become  their  character  to  show  an  animated 


158  THE  GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

concern  that  the  kingdom  which  has  their  pe- 
cuhar  allegiance  may  be  as  evidently  advancing, 
and  that  to  this  progress  that  enlargement  of 
the  temporal  dominion  may  be  made  in  some 
way  to  subserve.  And  here  you  will  all  be 
reminded  of  the  wonderfully  rapid  extension 
of  the  British  acquisitions  in  Asia,  where  we 
cannot  help  interpreting  it  in  favour  of  a  higher 
cause,  that  a  lying  spirit  should  have  betrayed 
so  many  pagan  and  Mahommedan  powers  to 
provoke  their  own  destruction.  We  can,  in 
this  view  of  such  vast  conquests,  thank  the 
contrivers  and  the  heroes,  whose  contempt 
would  at  any  stage  of  the  career  have  been 
excited  at  the  notion  of  its  having  been  the 
real  cause  of  their  success,  that  they  were  pre- 
paring the  way  for  Christianity. 

It  is  of  course  for  men  of  counsel  and  of 
war  to  scorn  this  fanatical  mode  of  estimating 
splendid  conquests.  But  we  can  see  little  on 
any  other  ground  to  console  good  men  for  the 
heavy  addition  made  by  conquests  so  splendid, 
to  those  public  burdens  which  leave  them  such 
scanty  means  of  doing  good  of  their  own  choice 
and  in  their  own  manner.     Should  national 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  159 

glory  be  talked  of,  we  could  have  no  fear  of 
making  the  appeal  to  every  one  within  hearing, 
whether  he,  as  an  indivddual  of  the  nation,  and 
one  of  the  owners  therefore  of  the  glory  of 
these  Eastern  acquisitions,  would  not  most 
w^ihingly  surrender  his  share  of  it  on  the  terms 
of  receiving  back,  were  that  possible,  so  much 
as  it  may  fairly  be  calculated  to  have  cost  him, 
with  the  addition  of  so  much  as  it  is  yet  to 
cost.  Especially  this  would  be  a  safe  appeal 
to  a  man  who  is  thinking  what  a  valuable  con- 
tribution that  sum  would  be  to  projects  for 
diffusing  Christianity  through  that  part  of  the 
world.  It  has  not  been  left  him  for  any  such 
disposal.  But  stih,  let  him  hope  in  Divine 
Providence,  that  even  to  that  object  it  has  not 
been  altogether  lost.  And  here  is  a  project 
which  seeks  to  redeem  to  this  very  purpose 
what  has  been  taken  and  expended  in  a  spirit 
infinitely  foreign  to  it,  and  what,  unless  so  re- 
deemed, may  be  justly  accounted,  for  the 
greater  portion  of  it,  lost  in  the  most  absolute 
sense.  But  this  enterprise  too  is  a  concern  of 
serious  expense.  The  advocates  of  this  design 
have  no  way  of  avoiding  the  confession  that  it 


160  THE  GLORY   OF   THE   AGE, 

seeks  to  impose  a  little  more  cost  for  India  on 
persons  to  whom  that  country  has,  indepen- 
dently of  their  will,  cost  too  much  already  ; 
but  it  is  an  addition  somewhat  of  the  nature  of 
an  insurance  for  Christianity  on  the  ultimate 
effect  of  the  large  expenditure  past  and  to 
come.  It  is  like  something  to  be  thrown  into 
the  water,  to  cause  that  miraculously  to  float 
which  were  else  irrecoverably  sunk. 

The  object  is,  that  the  true  religion  may 
advance  upon  the  track  of  our  victorious  armies, 
may  plant  stations  on  the  fields  of  their  en- 
campments and  battles,  may  demolish,  in  the 
moral  sense,  as  many  strong  holds  of  supersti- 
tion as  our  artillery  has  reduced  fortresses  ; 
may,  in  short,  carry  on  operations  correspond- 
ing to  the  wars  in  all  the  points  esteemed  the 
most  glorious.  And  what  a  delightful  thing, 
if  thus  a  Power  never  thought  of  by  either  of 
the  parties  in  the  long  conflict,  shall  come  in 
and  take  the  best  of  the  spoils,  and  assume,  in 
a  better  sense,  the  dominion  which  so  many 
potentates  have  been  compelled  to  resign ; 
showing  the  one  people  how  they  had,  in 
truth,  been  beguiled  through  expenditure  and 


OR  THE   SPIIIIT   OF   MISSIONS.  161 

exertion,  for  an  object  for  which  they  would 
have  scorned  to  make,  knowingly,  a  thousandth 
part  of  such  a  sacrifice  ;  and  the  other,  that 
their  political  independence  was  lost  but  in 
order  that  a  conquest  over  all  their  gods  might 
be  o;ained.  —  But  how  is  a  desim  which  looks 
to  such  consequences  to  be  supported  in  the 
prosecution  ?  It  is  evident  there  is  no  way 
but  that  in  which  the  friends  of  religion  may, 
if  they  will,  decline  to  afford  their  aid. 

Among  the  many  reasons  why  we  think 
they  should  not  so  decline,  we  may  suggest 
the  certainty  that  all  contributions  will  be  ap- 
plied in  a  manner  to  produce  the  greatest  pos- 
sible effect.  One  of  the  most  conspicuous  and 
uncontested  of  the  merits  of  the  undertaking 
has  been  the  economy  of  expenditure  through- 
out the  whole  system.  The  statements  of 
what  has  resulted,  in  a  substantial  form,  besides 
an  immensity  of  such  exertions  as  cannot  be 
brought  into  formal  account,  give  evidence 
that  all  who  have  been  concerned  in  expend- 
ing have  had  a  conscientious  regard  to  the  ob- 
ject. As  to  the  missionaries  themselves,  it  is 
impossible  to  conceive  a  stronger  pledge  for 
18 


162  THE  GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

the  careful  application  of  the  whole  resources, 
than  the  fact  of  their  having  many  years  gen- 
erously devoted  the  produce  of  their  own 
indefatigable  labours.  This  warfare  therefore, 
in  HIndoostan,  is  in  no  danger  of  incurring  a 
charge  which  has  been  constantly  and  heavily 
laid  on  the  conduct  of  our  other  wars  there. 
We  may  be  assured  that  all  the  supplies  af- 
forded to  this  service  will  go  into  the  effective 
apparatus,  and  will  be  felt  in  the  enemy's 
camp.  It  is  gratifying  to  a  contributor  to  feel 
confident,  that  what  goes  from  his  hand  as  a 
real  and  sensible  diminution  of  what  was  his 
own,  will  not  be  as  if  annihilated  or  thrown 
into  the  sea,  but  will  be  really  efficient,  in  its 
measure,  in  the  distant  service  for  which  it  is 
surrendered. 

While  we  pay  the  tribute  of  our  admiration 
and  gratitude  to  the  devotedness,  the  disinter- 
estedness, and  the  astonishing  performances 
of  the  fraternity  at  Serampore,  we  cannot  help 
being  reminded  that  the  chief  of  these  labourers 
are  advanced  in  life,  and  the  leader  of  the 
whole  band  verging  fast,  in  point  of  age,  to  the 
decline.    We  will  not  dwell  on  the  irreparable 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF   MISSIONS.  163 

loss,  which  the  cause  sustained  by  them  with 
so  noble  an  energy  is  one  day  to  suffer.  But 
it  does  seem  highly  desirable  that  the  remain- 
ing portion  of  the  lives  of  these  veterans  should 
be  turned  to  the  utmost  account.  For  one 
thing,  a  few  spirits  so  long  and  severely  disci- 
plined, who  have  mastered  so  much  difficulty, 
that  nothing  which  can  remain  appears  at  all 
formidable  to  them,  and  w^ho  habitually,  and 
now  as  it  were  mechanically,  labour  at  the 
extreme  pitch  of  their  labouring  power,  —  and 
that  power  indefinitely  increased  by  practice, 
— a  few  such  men,  and  those  also  acting  in 
conceit,  are  to  be  estimated  at  perhaps  ten- 
fold their  numerical  force,  even  considered  in 
reference  simply  to  the  amount  of  work  they 
can  perform.  But  again,  so  long  as  these 
men  are  spared,  to  remain  in  conjunction  at 
the  head  of  the  system,  they  w^ill  do  much  to 
preserve  in  it  a  compactness,  a  judiciousness 
of  distribution,  a  commensurateness  of  agents 
to  their  respective  work  and  to  one  another, 
and  a  comprehensiveness  of  scheme  greatly 
conducive  both  to  rapidity  of  execution,  and 
to  that  uniformity  and  consistency  of  principle 


164  THE   GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

in  the  proceedings,  which  is  of  great  impor- 
tance in  a  cause  that,  in  provoking  the  conflict 
with  so  mighty  a  league  of  iniquities,  has  need 
to  be  in  harmony  within  itself.  Add  to  this, 
that  the  high  example  of  these  leaders  is  form- 
ing a  standard  for  their  younger  coadjutors, 
who  will  be  the  better  qualified  to  become 
their  successors,  the  larger  the  scale  is  on 
which  they  behold  their  manner  of  operation. 
Now,  while  there  is  no  adding  to  the  length 
of  these  invaluable  lives,  it  is  possible  to  make, 
if  we  may  so  express  it,  an  addition  to  their 
breadth.  That  is,  it  is  possible  for  these  men's 
minds  and  their  system  to  be  brought  into 
action  on  a  larger  amount  of  materials,  and 
therefore  over  a  space  both  morally  and  locally 
more  extended.  And  great  stress  is  to  be  laid 
on  the  consideration,  that  more  copious  aid 
supplied  during  their  life  would  be,  not  simply 
so  much  more  of  means  put  in  action,  to  pro- 
duce an  addition  of  effect  proportioned  to  the 
value  of  those  means  considered  absolutely  ; 
but  means  put  in  action  according  to  a  ratio  of 
force  peculiar  to  a  transient  conjuncture,  the 
like  of  which  cannot  exist  ao:ain  :  such  enlaro:- 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  165 

ed  aid  would  serve  the  cause  in  the  macrnified 

o 

proportion  of  these  men's  pre-eminence  of 
adapted ness  to  serve  it. 

Nor  is  it  any  disparagement,  by  anticipation, 
to  the  zeal  and  talent  which  we  are  confident 
the  Supreme  Head  of  the  church  will  appoint 
in  long  succession  to  this  work,  when  we  rep- 
resent the  special  importance  of  aiding  it  in 
this  particular  stage,  on  the  ground  that  a 
combination  of  men,  uniting  the  advantage  of  a 
patriarchal  priority  in  time,  with  individual 
endowments  so  distinguished,  and  with  such 
complete  conformity  of  agencies,  constituting, 
as  it  were,  a  great  intellectual  machine,  can 
hardly  ever  be  equalled  in  the  powder  of  mak- 
ing the  most  efficient  application  of  whatever 
means  shall  be  supplied. 

The  right  policy,  in  this  case,  is  the  same 
as  that  which  would  impel  a  State,  engaged  in 
some  ambitious  enterprise,  to  push  its  military 
operations  most  earnestly,  and  with  every 
practicable  reinforcement,  during  the  last  cam- 
paign in  which  those  operations  could  probably 
have  the  advantage  of  being  directed  by  an 


166  THE   GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

unbroken  band  of  veterans  trained  in  conjunc- 
tion to  victory  in  the  service. 

And  even  as  regarding  these  men  them- 
selves, wiHing,  hke  St.  Paul,  to  forego,  if  it 
might  be  put  at  their  option,  a  more  speedy- 
emancipation  from  their  toils  to  the  final  rest, 
and  to  labour  on  to  the  last  period  of  exhaust- 
ed nature, — it  seems  due  from  our  sympathy 
and  gratitude  to  wish,  that  if  death  should  not 
deny  them  the  time,  the  Christian  public 
should  not  refuse  them  the  other  means,  for 
advancing  the  introductory  process  of  the  great 
work  to  a  point  where  they  would  be  perfectly 
willing  to  bid  it  adieu.  That  supposed  limit 
of  their  Christian  ambition  is  not  altogether  an 
imaginary  one  :  Elijah's  chariot,  sent  to  bear 
them  away,  would  not  inspire  in  them  such 
joy,  in  quitting  the  world,  as  to  know  that  the 
most  important  parts  of  the  revelation  of  God 
had  been  brought  to  speak  in  every  considera- 
ble lano^uage  of  Asia. 

But  at  all  events,  they  will  depart  with  the 
delight  of  knowing,  that  their  distinguished  lot 
on  earth  has  been  to  open  the  w^ay,  in  an  im- 
portant sense,  to  the  regicn  whither  they  are 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  167 

going,  for  a  countless  multitude,  many  of  whom 
they  will  be  assured  are  to  follow  them  ;  while 
they  will  rejoice  to  have  staid  long  enough  to 
see  the  evinced  and  completed  efficacy  of  their 
appointment  as  evangelists  in  some  that  are 
gone  before  them.  They  will  know  that  by 
the  cause  in  which  they  have  lived  and  la- 
boured, and  are  dying,  a  new  mode  of  the 
divine  attention,  a  greater  measure  of  the  di- 
vine interest,  has  been  drawn  and  must  remain 
fixed  in  benignant  radiance  upon  a  formerly 
estranged  and  desolate  tract  of  the  world  ; 
inasmuch  as  wherever  there  are  faithful  wit- 
nesses to  the  truth,  repenting  sinners,  and  pa- 
gans making  sacrifices  of  the  idols  to  which 
they  had  offered  sacrifice,  and  commencing  in 
the  name  of  Christ  a  new  life,  amidst  prayers 
and  praises  in  languages  w^hich  never  addressed 
the  Almighty  before,  there  is  (speaking  rever- 
ently) something  to  necessitate  toward  that 
spot  a  far  more  special  emanation  of  favour 
and  providence  from  heaven,  than  w^ien  that 
moral  waste  contained  nothing  related  to  God. 
If  there  were  but  one  particle  there  of  such 
new^  and  sacred  existence,  heaven  must  con- 


168  THE   GLORY   OF  THE  AGE, 

tlnue  111  communication  with  the  spot  where 
there  is  something  so  much  its  own,  till  it  be- 
came extinct,  or  were  resumed  to  the  sky. 
How  happy  then  if  there  shall  be  there  an 
augmentation,  every  day,  of  what  thus  bears  a 
special  relation  to  God,  to  become  a  continu- 
ally mightier  attraction  of  the  divine  benignity 
thitherward  ;  till  at  length  the  language  of 
prophecy  shall  be  fulfilled,  "  Behold,  the  tab- 
ernacle of  God  is  with  men,  and  he  will  dwell 
with  them,  and  they  shall  be  his  people,  and 
God  himself  shall  be  with  them,  and  be  their 
God." 

In  a  confidence  of  a  progressive  prevalence 
of  the  gracious  dispensation  of  which  we  think 
we  see  the  commencement,  it  might  be  per- 
mitted to  indulge  for  a  moment  in  the  contem- 
plation of  India  as  in  a  future  age,  in  which 
distant  period  we  can  in  a  measure  conceive 
what  will  be  the  reflections  of  a  dev^out  ob- 
server, regarding  the  scene  in  reference  to  the 
past.  With  the  picture  on  his  imagination  of 
India  as  the  missionaries  will  have  recorded 
that  they  found  it,  and  as  many  other  pre- 
served authentic  descriptions  will  agree  with 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  169 

tliem  In  representing  it,  he  may  look  over  the 
ample  reij;ion,  to  wonder  what  is  become  of 
that  direful  element  which  was  once  perceived 
pervading  and  corrupting  the  whole  wide  dif- 
fusion of  mental  and  moral  existence,  bringing 
out  to  view,  as  it  were  in  a  darkness  visible  of 
depravity,  the  souls  of  men  conspicuously 
through  their  less  sable  exterior.  The  dusky 
visages,  the  attire,  the  structure  of  habitations, 
and  the  grand  features  of  Nature,  will  be  seen 
the  same  ;  but  a  horrid  something,  composed 
of  lies,  and  crimes,  and  curses,  and  woes,  that 
did  rest  in  deadly  possession  over  all  the  land, 
will  be  broken  up  and  gone.  Where  has  a 
place  been  found  for  what  occupied  for  ages 
after  ages  so  many  cities,  and  villages,  and 
houses,  and  minds  ?  What  tempest  has  driven 
it  away  ?  What  presence  has  been  here 
which  that  presence  could  not  abide  ?  Was 
it  that  Spirit  in  awe  of  whom  eternal  night 
vanished  at  the  creation  of  the  world  ? 

He  may  look  from  the  southern  shore  toward 

the  sublime  mountain-boundary  of  the  region 

on  the  north,  and  reflect  what  a  scene  it  was 

to  confront  heaven,  in  all  this  breadth,  with 

19 


170  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  AGE, 

deities,  and  doctrines,  and  devotions,  detestable 
to  the  true  God  ;  each  individual  of  unnum- 
bered millions  being  infatuated  and  busied  by 
notions  and  practices  not  one  of  which  could 
have  been  in  existence  but  by  the  fall  of  our 
nature.  But  how  glorious  for  that  reflecting 
observer  to  feel  it  verified  to  him  that  this  is 
but  a  vision  of  the  past,  and  that,  departing 
like  a  dream  when  one  awakes,  it  leaves  him 
in  view  of  a  bright  and  blessed  reality.  How 
he  will  exult  in  the  palpable  evidence  that  the 
Son  of  God  has  spread  his  dominion  from  those 
shores  to  those  mountains  ;  that  the  oracles  of 
truth  have  taken  place  of  the  most  silly,  and 
loathsome,  and  monstrous  legends  with  which 
the  father  of  lies  ever  made  contemptuous 
sport  of  the  folly  of  his  dupes ;  and  that  the 
new  religion  admitted  in  faith  has  crowned 
itself  and  its  believers  with  all  its  appropriate 
virtues.  When  joining  with  them  in  exercises 
of  worship  to  the  true  God,  he  may  have  short 
lapses  of  the  mind  into  a  view  of  the  past, 
presented  in  vivid  images  of  the  fantastic  fool- 
eries, and  the  orgies,  that  once  celebrated  the 
infatuation  which  reigned  as  religion  in  the 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIONS.  171 

people,  on  the  very  same  spot,  as  attested  by 
some  relic  of  the  Riins  of  a  temple  ;  and  he 
will  recover  from  such  brief  alienation  of 
thought  to  verify  the  fact,  that  he  actually  is 
among  persons  reverently  calling  on  God  in 
the  name  of  Christ.  That  disease  of  the  soul 
will  be  gone  that  exhibits  itself  in  alternate 
lethargy  and  raving.  The  charities  of  human- 
ity, restored  among  them,  will  show  why  it 
was  that  their  ancestors  could  look  upon,  or 
even  cause,  the  death  of  relativ^es  and  friends 
with  stockish  indifference.  And  finally,  he 
will  see  the  effect  of  that  which  missionaries 
are  seeking  to  promote  among  them,  in  the 
manner  in  which  the  death  of  Christianized 
Hindoos  will  differ  from  that  sullen  quiet,  that 
stoicism  without  magnanimity,  with  which  the 
pagan  Hindoo  submits  to  fate. 

And  if  we  might,  for  a  moment,  entertain  so 
improbable  an  idea,  as  that  this  observer  and 
comparer  should  be  uninformed  of  the  general 
course  of  means  and  operation,  through  which 
the  Almighty  Spirit  had  accomplished  this 
great  change,  we  can  suppose  his  conjectures 
on  the  subject  to  be  much  too  magnificent. 


172  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

How  came  thousands  of  temples  to  be  surren- 
dered to  the  decay  of  time  or  the  violence  of 
dilapidation,  an  infinity  of  idols  to  be  demol- 
ished, a  mythology  and  ritual,  involving  the 
whole  life  and  being  of  the  human  multitude, 
to  be  exploded,  the  powers  of  Brahmins  and 
priests  to  be  annihilated,  a  whole  intellectual 
and  moral  system  to  be  supplanted  by  its  op- 
posite ?  Might  not  such  questions  put  his 
mind  on  the  effort  to  imagine  the  most  extra- 
ordinary modes  of  divine  interposition  ?  He 
might  fancy,  perhaps,  that  some  great  convul- 
sion of  nature  had  contributed  to  the  overthrow 
of  so  many  structures,  forming  the  glory  and 
the  fortresses  of  superstition  ;  that  portentous 
phenomena,  bearing  a  menacing  aspect  upon 
the  pagan  rites,  had  been  displayed  in  the 
heavens  ;  that  contemporary  miracles,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word,  had  attested  the  record 
of  the  ancient  ones  ;  or  that  some  peculiarity 
of  temporal  good  fortune,  frequently  attending 
the  converts,  had  marked  them  out  to  the 
gross  apprehension  of  the  idolaters  as  favourites 
of  the  Power  that  governs  the  world.  And 
might  he  surmise  in  addition,  that  the  foreign 


OR   THE   SPIRIT   OF   MISSIONS.  173 

State,  which  had  conquered  Hindoostan,  must 
have  systematically  lent,  during  the  acquisition 
and  possession,  its  whole  influence  arising  from 
conquest  and  dominion,  to  promote  Christian- 
ity hy  every  expedient  short  of  force  ? 

No,  he  might  be  told,  you  see,  in  all  this 
{^lorious  view,  nothino^  which  is  to  be  referred 
to  any  such  causes.  The  work  began  in  some 
of  the  humblest  movements  that  ever  pointed 
to  a  great  object,  movements  in  which  the 
actors  perhaps  owed  their  toleration  to  con- 
tempt. A  train  of  ideas  was  excited  in  the 
minds  of  some  individuals  respecting  the  proph- 
ecies relative  to  the  heathen  nations.  Their 
conversations  about  these  with  their  religious 
friends,  led  to  meetings,  prayers,  little  arrange- 
ments of  co-operation,  and  slender  contribu- 
tions of  money.  A  gradual  extension  of  these 
measures  resulted  in  tlie  sending  of  several 
zealous  men,  by  means  of  conveyance  marked 
with  the  disfavour  of  the  o-overnino;  authorities, 
to  begin  the  experiment.  It  was  commenced 
under  appearances  very  far  from  resembling 
Constantine's  pretended  vision  of  a  cross  in  the 
clouds,  inscribed  as  the  sitrn  of  victorv  ;    or 


174  THE  GLORY   OF  THE   AGE, 

from  recalling  to  mind  the  accounts  of  pas^an 
priests  of  other  ages  having  been  alFrighted  by 
the  trembling  of  their  fanes,  accompanied  by 
fearful  voices  from  their  recesses,  announcing 
the  abandonment  of  the  solemn  abode  by  the 
(deities.  Had  these  servants  of  Christ  taken 
up  their  design  on  any  condition  of  the  inter- 
vention of  preternatural  omens  and  instrumen- 
tality, the  only  dictate  of  their  experience, 
through  every  stage,  would  have  been  to  lay 
it  down.  But,  wild  as  they  were  accounted, 
both  the  promoters  in  England  and  the  agents 
in  the  East,  they  had  entertained  no  presump- 
tions which  could  lead  to  the  conclusion  of  its 
not  being  worth  while  to  persevere,  and  to 
enjoin  on  their  successors  an  interminable  per- 
severance, in  the  trial  of  what  the  Almighty 
should  see  fit  to  accomplish  at  length  by  means 
of  the  diffusion  of  the  Bible,  and  a  never-tired 
repetition  of  missionary  journeys,  addresses, 
and  conferences,  with  the  co-operating  effect 
of  schools,  and  writings  on  religion.  This 
economy  of  plain  expedients,  (it  may  be  sup- 
posed to  be  said  to  the  future  admirer  of 
the  transformation,)  these  operations,  so  little 


OR  THE  SPIRIT  OF  MISSIOXS.  175 

related  to  poetry  or  prodigy,  or  to  the  wild 
ardour  of  fanaticism,  went  on  in  auffmentinor 
vigour,  wliile  those  who  had  commenced  them 
sunk,  one  after  another,  in  the  dust.  On  their 
tomhs,  their  successors  devoted  themselves  to 
prosecute  the  same  labours  of  the  holy  war. 
Converts  from  heathenism,  in  still  greater 
numbers  every  year,  were  brought  in  as  cap- 
tives, but  to  go  out  under  the  oath  of  hostility 
against  that  of  which  they  and  their  ancestors 
had  been  the  slaves.  The  succeeding  gener- 
ation of  the  Christians  of  the  west,  were  happy 
to  continue  from  that  quarter  their  alliance  and 
aid  in  the  mightier  progress  of  a  cause,  which 
their  ancestors  had  begun  in  so  diminutive  a 
form,  committing  in  faith  and  hope  its  success 
to  God.  The  influence  of  that  Sovereign 
Spirit  has  descended  in  a  progressive  increase 
of  efficacy  far  more  than  proportioned  to  the 
enlargement  of  the  system  of  means  :  and  so 
it  has  come  to  pass,  (it  might  be  said  to  the 
future  admirer,)  that  you  can  exult  in  the  dis- 
appearance from  the  world  of  one  mighty  form 
of  evil,  against  which  the  Christians  of  a  past 
age  had  to  maintain  a  long  hostility. 


176  THE  GLORY   OF   THE  AGE, 

As  to  US,  and  our  period  of  time,  there  is 
this  grand  form  of  Moral  Evil  standing  boldly 
forward  in  possession  of  a  large  part  of  our 
world.  But  this  is  only  one  of  the  forms  in 
which  that  worst  enemy  evinces  a  powerful 
and  dreadful  presence.  We  must,  or  we  are 
ruined,  be  kept  in  a  habitual  and  alarming 
sense  of  the  fact,  that  the  one  thing  in  the 
creation  w^hich  surpasses  all  others  as  an  object 
for  hatred,  is  here  amidst  us,  and  all  around, 
ill  many  diversities  of  malignant  existence  ; 
and  with  all  of  them  it  is  our  vocation  to  be  at 
enmity  and  war.  IVIy  brethren,  it  were  in 
vain  to  seek  to  escape  from  the  condition  of 
our  place  in  the  dominions  of  God.  A  mind 
of  wandering  and  melancholy  thought,  impa- 
tient of  the  grievous  realities  of  our  state,  may 
at  some  moments  almost  breathe  the  wish  that 
we  had  been  a  different  order  of  beings,  in 
another  dwelling  place  than  this,  and  appointed 
on  a  different  service  to  the  Almighty.  In 
vain !  Here  still  we  are,  to  pass  the  first  part 
of  our  existence  in  a  world  where  it  is  impos- 
sible to  be  at  peace,  because  there  has  come 
into  it  a  mortal  enemy  to  all  that  live  in  it. 


OR  THE   SPIRIT   OF  MISSIONS.  177 

Amidst  the  darkness  that  veils  from  us  the 
stale  of  the  universe,  we  would  willingly  be 
persuaded  that  this  our  world  may  be  the  only 
region  (except  that  of  penal  justice)  w^here 
the  cause  of  evil  is  permitted  to  maintain  a 
contest.  Here  perhaps  may  be  almost  its  last 
encampment,  where  its  prolonged  power  of 
hostility  may  be  suffered  in  order  to  give  a 
protracted  display  of  the  manner  of  its  appoint- 
ed destruction.  Here  our  lot  is  cast,  on  a 
ground  so  awfully  pre-occupied  ;  a  calamitous 
distinction  !  but  yet  a  sublime  one,  if  thus  we 
may  render  to  the  Eternal  King  a  service  of  a 
more  arduous  kind  than  it  is  possible  to  the 
inhabitants  of  any  other  world  than  this  to  ren- 
der him  ;  and  if  thus  we  may  be  trained, 
through  devotion  and  conformity  to  the  Celes- 
tial Chief  in  this  warfare,  to  the  final  attain- 
ment of  what  he  has  promised,  in  so  many  illus- 
trious forms,  to  him  that  overcometh.  We  shall 
soon  leave  the  region  wdiere  so  much  is  in  rebel- 
lion against  our  God.  But  we  shall  go  where 
all  that  pass  from  our  world  must  present  them- 
selves as  from  battle,  or  be  denied  to  mingle  in 
the  eternal  joys  and  triumphs  of  the  conquerors. 

END. 


GOD   INVISIBLE. 


GOD    INVISIBLE. 


This  ingenious  sketch,  on  a  subject  in  which  the 
largest  intellect  is  almost  lost,  is  by  the  author  of  the 
foregoing  Essay,  and  was  first  published  in  the  London 
New  Baptist  Miscellany. 

Much  is  seeing,  feeling  man  actuated  by 
the  objects  around  him.  All  his  powers  are 
roused,  impelled,  directed,  by  impressions 
made  on  his  sensitive  organs ;  yet  objects  of 
sense  have  only  a  definite  force  upon  him.  A 
hundred  weidit  crushes  a  man's  strength  to  a 
certain  deo;ree,  and  no  more  :  he  sustains  and 
bears  it  away.  On  the  edge  of  the  ocean  he 
may  tremble  at  the  vast  expanse,  but  he  tries 
the  depth  near  the  shore,  and  finds  it  but  a 
few  feet,  and  no  longer  fears  to  enter  it.  The 
waves  cannot  overtop  his  head  ;  or,  is  it  deepi? 
he  can  swim,  and  no  longer  regards  it  with 


182  GOD  INVISIBLE. 

fear.  Nay,  he  builds  a  ship,  and  makes  this 
tremendous  ocean  his  servant,  wields  its  vast- 
ness  for  his  own  use,  dives  to  its  deep  bottom 
to  rob  it  of  its  treasures,  or  makes  its  surface 
convey  him  to  distant  shores.  A  much  small- 
er object  shall  aftect  him  more,  when  his  senses 
are  less  distinctly  acted  upon,  but  his  imagina- 
tion is  somewhat  aroused.  When  he  travels 
in  the  dark,  he  starts  at  a  slight  but  indistinct' 
noise ;  he  knows  not  but  it  may  be  a  wild 
beast  lurking,  or  a  robber  ready  to  seize  on 
him.  Could  he  have  distinctly  seen  what 
alarmed  him,  he  had  undauntedly  passed  on  ; 
it  was  only  the  moving  of  the  leaves  waved 
gently  by  the  wind.  He  stops,  he  considers 
well,  for  he  hears  the  sound  of  water  falling  ; 
a  gleam  from  its  foaming  surface  sparkles  in 
his  eye,  but  he  cannot  tell  how  near  to  it,  or 
how  distant ;  how  exactly  it  might  be  in  his 
path  ;  how  tremendously  deep  the  abyss  into 
which  he  may  fall  at  the  next  step.  Had  it 
been  daylight,  could  he  have  examined  it 
thoroughly,  he  had  then  passed  it  w^ithout  no- 
tice ;  it  is  only  the  rill  of  a  small  ditch  in  the 


GOD  INVISIBLE.  '  183 

road  side ;   his  own  foot  could  have  stopped 
the  trickhng  current. 

This  effect  of  indistinctness  rousing  the 
imagination  is  finely  depicted  in  Job  4:  14. 
Eliphaz  describes  it  thus:  —  "Fear  came 
upon  me  and  trembling,  which  made  all 
my  bones  to  shake.  Then  a  spirit  passed 
before  my  face ;  the  hair  of  my  flesh  stood 
up  :  it  stood  still,  but  I  could  not  discern 
the  form  thereof."  The  senses  in  this  de- 
scription are  but  slightly  affected :  the  eye 
could  not  discern  any  specific  form,  the  touch 
could  not  examine  the  precise  nature  of  the 
object ;  the  imagination  therefore  had  full 
scope,  the  mind  was  roused  beyond  the  power 
of  sensible  objects  to  stimulate  it,  and  the  body 
felt  an  agitation  greater  than  if  its  senses  had 
been  more  fully  acted  upon.  "He  trembled, 
the  hairs  of  his  flesh  stood  up.  —  He  could  not 
discern  the  form,"  it  might  therefore  be  terrific 
in  its  shape  or  tremendous  in  its  size.  "  It 
stood  still,"  as  if  to  do  something  to  him  ;  to 
speak  ;  perhaps  to  smite  or  to  destroy  !  And 
how  could  he  guard  against  that  which  he 


184  GOD   INVISIBLE. 

could  not  see,  could  not  tell  whence  or  what 
it  was  ;  that  w^hich,  from  what  he  could  dis- 
cover, and  still  more  from  what  he  could  not 
discover,  seemed  to  be  no  mortal  substance  to 
which  he  was  accustomed,  and  with  which, 
with  care  and  courage,  he  might  deal  safely ; 
but  a  spirit  utterly  beyond  his  impression,  hav- 
ino'  unknown  power  to  impress  even  him,  who 
can  tell  in  what  degree  ?  The  certainty  of  an 
object  so  near  him,  joined  to  the  uncertainty 
of  what  might  be  his  powers,  intentions,  and 
natural  operations,  impressed  him  deeply  with 
awe,  expectation,  and  anxiety.  How  absurd 
then,  how  contrary  to  all  their  feelings  in  other 
cases,  is  the  conduct  of  infidels  who  affect  to 
despise  God,  —  to  deny  his  existence  because 
they  cannot  see  him, — or,  without  affecting 
this,  do  actually  forget  and  do  him  despite,  by 
occasion  of  this  circumstance*!  iVIen  who  can 
be  appalled  at  some  distant  danger,  and  grow 
courageous  at  what  is  near  at  hand — who 
tremble  at  a  fellow  man,  or  crawling  reptile, 
and  only  show  hardihood  when  their  foe  is 
Almighty. 


GOD  INVISIBLE.  18 

Without  inquiring  what  Ehphaz  saw,  let  us 
apply  these  ideas  to  the  Supreme  Being  ;  let 
us  meditate  on  an  object  of  infinitely  greater, 
nearer  importance,  —  "the  invisible  God,"  the 
most  impressively  impoitant  because  invisible. 
Let  us,  for  a  moment,  suppose  the  contrary  to 
be  the  case  —  Suppose  the  Deity  to  be  the 
object  of  our  senses  —  He  then  loses  much  of 
his  majesty  —  he  becomes  fixed  to  one  spot, 
that  in  which  we  can  see  him.  He  must  be 
distant  from  many  other  places,  and,  when  re- 
vealing himself  in  other  places,  must  be  far 
distant  from  us,  even  at  a  time  when  we  must 
need  his  presence.  Nay,  we  should  begin  to 
compute  him  ;  to  philosophize  upon  and  at- 
tempt experiments  with  him.  Were  he  vast 
as  the  starry  heavens,  we  could  measure  him ; 
bright  as  yonder  sun,  we  could  contrive  to 
gaze  at  him  ;  energetic  as  the  vivid  lightning, 
w^e  could  bring  him  down  to  play  around  us. 
In  no  form  can  we  conceive  of  his  being  an 
object  of  sense,  but  we  sink  him  to  a  creature  ; 
give  him  some  definable  shape,  reduce  him  to 
a  man  or  mere  idol,  and  we  have  need  to  pro- 
20 


186  GOD   INVISIBLE. 

vide  him  a  temple  made  with  hands  for  his 
accommodation. 

If  indeed  there  were  any  doubt  of  his  exist- 
ence (but  that  man  is  incapable  of  reasoning 
who  reasons  thus,)  there  are  proofs  enough 
that  he  is  at  our  right  hand,  though  we  do  not 
see  him  ;  that  he  works  at  our  left  hand, 
though  we  cannot  behold  him.  Instead  of 
asking,  with  a  sneer  of  doubt,  where  is  he  ? 
or  carelessly  thinking  thus  : — shall  God  see  ? 
a  much  more  rational  method  is  with  awe  and 
reverence  to  say  — "  Whither  shall  I  flee  from 
thy  presence  ?  thou  hast  beset  me  behind  and 
before,  and  laid  thine  hand  upon  me."  Could 
any  supposition  take  place  even  of  his  momen- 
tary absence — that  he  was  far  off,  or  on  a 
journey,  or  asleep,  and  must  needs  be  awaked 
—  it  might  be  alleged  to  sanction  the  careless, 
provided  they  were  aware  of  his  absence,  or 
knew  the  time  of  his  drowsiness  or  distance  ; 
but  an  omnipresent  Almighty  ought  to  fill  us 
with  seriousness,  and  the  uncertainty  of  his 
operations,  when,  how,  and  where  he  will 
work,  should  fill  us  with  deep,  lasting,  and 
constant  awe. 


GOD  INVISIBLE.  187 

He  exists, — the  thought  makes  a  temple 
in  every  place  I  may  be  in  ;  to  realize  it,  is  to 
begin  actual  worship ;  whatever  I  may  be 
about,  to  indulge  it  is  to  make  all  other  exist- 
ence fade  away.  Amid  the  roar  of  mirth  I 
hear  only  his  voice  ;  in  the  glitter  of  dissipa- 
tion I  see  only  his  brightness  ;  in  the  midst  of 
business  I  can  do  nothing  but  pray.  He  is 
present  !  what  may  he  not  see  ?  The  actions 
of  my  hands  he  beholds  !  the  voice  of  my 
words  he  hears  !  the  thoughts  of  my  heart  he 
discerns !  Could  I  see  him,  I  might  on  this 
side  guard  against  his  penetrating  eye,  or  on 
the  other  side  act  something  in  secret,  safe 
from  his  inspection ;  but  present,  w^ithout  my 
being  able  to  discern  him,  I  ought  to  be  watch- 
ful every  way  ;  the  slightest  error  may  fill  us 
with  awful  apprehensions.  Even  now,  says 
conscience,  he  may  be  preparing  his  venge- 
ance, whetting  his  glittering  sword,  or  drawing 
to  a  head  the  arrows  of  destruction.  Could 
my  eye  see  his  movements,  I  might  be  upon 
my  guard;  might  flee  to  some  shelter,  or 
shrink  away  from  the  blow  ;  but,  a  foe  so  near, 


188  GOD   INVISIBLE. 

and  yet  so  indiscernible,  may  well  alarm  me, 
lest  the  act  of  iniquity  meet  with  an  immediate 
reward ;  the  blasphemous  prayer  for  damna- 
tion receive  too  ready  an  answer  from  his  hot 
thunderbolt ! 

He  is  a  Spirit !  what  can  he  not  do  ?  Vast 
are  his  powers,  quick  his  discernments,  invisi- 
ble his  operations  !  No  sword  can  reach  him, 
no  shield  of  brass  can  protect  against  him,  no 
placid  countenance  deceive  him,  no  hypocriti- 
cal supplications  impose  upon  him.  He  is  in 
my  inmost  thoughts, — in  every  volition  ;  he 
supports  the  negociating  principle  while  it  de- 
termines on  its  rebelHons,  or  plans  some  mode 
by  which  to  elude  his  all-penetrating  percep- 
tion. Vain  is  every  attempt  at  evasion  or 
resistance.  ''  God  is  a  Spirit ;"  is  present 
every  moment,  surrounds  every  object,  watches 
my  steps  and  waits  upon  me,  though  I  cannot 
discern  his  form,  his  measure,  his  power,  or 
direct  his  movements.  I  see  him  before  my 
face  in  the  bright  walks  of  nature,  but  I  cannot 
discern  his  form.  Tlie  rich  landscape  shows 
him    good,    wise,    and   bounteous :    but    how 


GOD  INVISIBLE.  189 

bounteous,  good,  or  wise,  who,  from  the  rich- 
est landscape,  can  be  able  to  guess  ?  The 
brilliant  sun  gives  a  glimpse  of  his  brightness ; 
the  vast  starry  concave  show^s  his  immensity  ; 
but  how  bright,  how  immense,  it  were  impos- 
sible to  say.  Hark  !  he  speaks  in  that  burst- 
ing thunder,  or  he  moves  in  that  cmshing 
earthquake,  he  shines  in  that  blazing  comet. 
So  much  I  can  easily  discern,  but  God  is  still 
far  beyond  my  comprehension.  I  see  nothing 
but  the  hidings  of  his  power  ;  himself  is  still 
unknown. 

He  guides  the  affairs  of  providence.  I  see 
him  before  my  face,  but  I  cannot  behold  his 
form.  Who  but  he  could  have  raised  Pha- 
raoh ;  —  the  Nebuchadnezzar  of  ancient  or 
modern  times  ?  Who  but  he  could  have  rooted 
up  a  firmly-fixed  throne,  and  poised  a  mighty 
nation  upon  the  slender  point  of  a  stripling's 
energies  ?  I  have  seen  him  pass  before  me  in 
my  own  concerns,  leading  me  in  a  path  I 
did  not  know,  stopping  me  wdien  on  the 
verge  of  some  destruction,  filling  my  ex- 
hausted stores,  and  soothing  my  wearied  mind 


190  GOD  INVISIBLE. 

to  sweet  serenity.  I  could  not  but  say,  "  This 
is  the  Lord's  doing,  it  is  marvellous  in  my 
eyes  :"  but  I  cannot  discern  the  form  ;  I  know 
not  what  he  will  next  do,  nor  dare  I  walk  with 
presumptuous  steps,  or  repose  with  self-com- 
placent gratulation,  and  say,  "  My  mountain 
stands  strong,  I  shall  never  be  moved."  He 
hides  his  face  for  a  moment,  and  I  am  ti'ou- 
bled  ;  he  withdraws  his  hand,  and  I  die. 

I  see  a  spirit  passing  before  me,  I  hear  his 
voice  in  the  secret  recesses  ;  I  find  that  there 
is  a  God,  that  he  is  near,  that  he  stands  full  in 
view,  with  appalling  indistinctness,  so  that  I 
tremble,  and  the  hairs  of  my  flesh  stand  up  ; 
yet  I  cannot  discern  the  form.  I  know  not 
what  affrights,  stops,  impresses,  crushes  me. 
Company  I  hate,  for  it  neither  dispels  my 
sensations,  nor  harmonizes  with  them.  Soli- 
tude I  dread  ;  for  the  invisible  presence  is  there 
seen,  and  the  unknown  God  is  there  felt  in  all 
his  terrifying  influence.  To  deny  that  some  one 
is  acting  upon  me,  must  be  to  deny  that  I  see, 
feel,  am  anxious.  Could  I  tell  what,  or  who, 
I  might  call  the  wisdom  of  man  to  my  assist- 


GOD   INVISIBLE.  191 

ance ;  but  it  is  the  unknowable,  yet  well 
known  ;  the  indiscernible,  yet  surely  seen  ; 
the  incomprehensible,  intangible,  yet  fully 
understood  and  ever  present  God,  tliat  supports 
my  trembing  frame,  and  meets  the  warmest 
wishes  of  my  too  daring  mind  ;  the  resolute 
detenninations,  inefficacious  exertions,  and  the 
stubborn  submission  of  an  unwillino:  soul. 

Ah  !  let  this  present  Invisible  encircle  me 
with  his  mercy,  defend  me  with  his  power,  fill 
me  with  his  fear,  and  save  me  by  his  almighty 
grace.  Then,  though  I  discern  not  his  form, 
I  shall  be  conscious  of  his  presence,  and  the 
dehghtful  consciousness  shall  fill  me  with  rev- 
erence indeed,  but  not  make  my  flesh  to 
tremble.  He  shall  sooth  my  sorrows,  inspire 
my  hopes,  give  me  confidence  in  danger,  and 
supphes  in  every  necessity.  The  conscious- 
ness of  his  nearness,  approbation,  and  mercy, 
shall  enable  me  to  endure  like  Moses,  as  see- 
ing Him  who  is  INVISIBLE. 


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